Polycount, exporters, normal-mapping, texturing....questions

[Eye_of_Hawk]

Hello there!

I'm new to this community and i belive that these questions were discussed here tons of time but as all newcommers continue asking them .

First of all i'm using 3ds max 6.

1. What is the maximum polycount for character for example. What is the overall polycount for the scene. But if you mean the count in faces then plz state so.

2. For instance i have a character. How many different images with textures should i have. Can i store all my textures on one image. What is the resolution of the texture/image. If there should be several images then what are their resolutions ?

3. How can i export my meshes into Ogre engine, what should i use and where it's possible to find it ?

4. Is there a possobility to export biped animation (character studion anim.) or only custom bones with skin modif. ?

5. Is there any chance to export cloth simulation using reactor or any other things done using reactor and how can i do this ?

6. Is normal mapping available for Ogre engine ?

7. Which of the imported atributes engine does not support ?! (bump, glosiness, specularity etc. etc.)

Thank you very much for any feedback in advance. Will be greatful for any support.

[dennis]

1. What is the maximum polycount for character for example. What is the overall polycount for the scene. But if you mean the count in faces then plz state so.

As far as I can tell Ogre has no hard limits at all. The general consensus is that the number of objects is far more important than the number of polygons per object. I once (loooong time ago) had a single object with >200k polys running on a debug build getting 20 FPS on a GF2MX 32MB

2. For instance i have a character. How many different images with textures should i have. Can i store all my textures on one image. What is the resolution of the texture/image. If there should be several images then what are their resolutions ?

Yes, you will get the best performance if you put as much as you can in a single texture image as this reduces the number of render states.

3. How can i export my meshes into Ogre engine, what should i use and where it's possible to find it ?

There are a number of exporters available. Check out the tools section of the downloads page of the Ogre homepage.

4. Is there a possobility to export biped animation (character studion anim.) or only custom bones with skin modif. ?

Yes, check out the SkeletalAnimation demo for this.

5. Is there any chance to export cloth simulation using reactor or any other things done using reactor and how can i do this ?

-

6. Is normal mapping available for Ogre engine ?

Look for some examples on this forum.

7. Which of the imported atributes engine does not support ?! (bump, glosiness, specularity etc. etc.)

Reverse the question, and every attribute you stated is supported.

[sinbad]

1. What is the maximum polycount for character for example. What is the overall polycount for the scene. But if you mean the count in faces then plz state so.

There is none, except for vertex index limits imposed per-SubMesh by the datatypes. You can use 65,536 vertices per SubMesh if you use 16-bit indexes, or 4,294,967,296 vertices per SubMesh if you use 32-bit indexes. Use as many as you like depending on the hardware you are aiming at. Note that if you use a lot, you will need to use hardware skinning to get decent performance.

For instance i have a character. How many different images with textures should i have.

The fewer separate materials per mesh the better. The more images you use, the slower it will run because each part of the mesh with a different material has to be rendered individually. Try to use 1 if you can get away with it.

Can i store all my textures on one image. What is the resolution of the texture/image. If there should be several images then what are their resolutions ?

This is limited only by the graphics card, so it depends what you're aiming for. Again, the larger the texture the more expensive it is in terms of memory and performance. My card supports up to 4096x4096 textures, but you won't want to use textures that big unless you only use a small number. Also look into DXT texture compression if you want to use large textures to save space on the card.

3. How can i export my meshes into Ogre engine, what should i use and where it's possible to find it ?

We provide exporters for most modellers - look in the Downloads / Tools area.

4. Is there a possobility to export biped animation (character studion anim.) or only custom bones with skin modif. ?

Both.

5. Is there any chance to export cloth simulation using reactor or any other things done using reactor and how can i do this ?

No.

6. Is normal mapping available for Ogre engine ?

Yes, and a lot more.

7. Which of the imported atributes engine does not support ?! (bump, glosiness, specularity etc. etc.)

Please look at the material script format in the manual. The exporter does not convert all the 3DS features since they are non-realtime in nature, but the material format allows you to use all of the most complex realtime effects available today on GPUs.

[Eye_of_Hawk]

dennis and sinbad thank you very much for your time and indepth answers. Didn't really think that i would get all my questions answered. I'm very glad. Thanks again - that was a very pleasant surprise.

[Chris_with_a_Gun]

There is none, except for vertex index limits imposed per-SubMesh by the datatypes. You can use 65,536 vertices per SubMesh if you use 16-bit indexes, or 4,294,967,296 vertices per SubMesh if you use 32-bit indexes.

Is it possible that the 3D Max exporter only supports meshes with up to 64k vertices? Above that I always get a MaxScript Error. I tried to increase the memory as asked, but it doesn't help? Or is there another way to export meshes with highpolycount?

thanks

[sinbad]

According to this part in the script (OgreSkeletonLib_meshfns.ms), it does support 32-bit indexes:

Code: Select all

		-- Do we need 32-bit indexes?
		use32bitindexes = "false";
		if arrayLength verticesArrays[matId] > 65535 then
			use32bitindexes = "true";

Perhaps you should post the error you're getting. We are without a 3DS maintainer at the moment but maybe another user can give you a tip.

[Chris_with_a_Gun]

In that line I get a MaxScript Rollout Handler exception "Unknown System Exeption"
OgreSkeletonLib_meshfns.ms:83:

Code: Select all

                for adjoiningFaceIndex in (meshop.getFacesUsingVert selectedMesh vI) do

and 3D Max "has run out of memory and will now close". But it seems it doesn't have to do with the amount of vertices. I optimized the mesh down to 39k vertices and still got the same error and 3D Max is demanding more and more memory. I've 1GiB RAM and 4GiB swap, when 3Dmax crashes the process has allocated 2GiB of memory (real and virtual).

strange

[Chris_with_a_Gun]

Hi,

I narrowed it down a bit. With ~31k vertices and ~62k faces it wouldn't work. I reduced it further (from a orginal ~700k vertex mesh:)) and with this complexity it became exportable

Code: Select all

ZBrushPolyMesh3D		
Editable
29694 vertices
58878 faces
Yes, Yes, No, No, No, No, Yes, Yes, Yes, defaultMat (Standard)

But it's really stressing my system. For the export of this it consumes 800MiB system + 1,75GiB virtual memory. I don't know MAXscript, but is that really necessary?
I checked the same thing on my laptop with 512MiB Ram and the vertex treashold is even lower there. But doesn't anyone else have this problem?

thanks for any help