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G'day all, I am in the process of doing modelling and texturing of the bogies for my 300 and 400 Class Red Hen railcars and I am not totally satisfied with the poly count for each bogie, being 2378 polys for each complete bogie, making a whopping 4756 polys even before any other underbody and body modeling is taken into account. I am happy with my current texture I have for my bogies, but wondering how the heck I can cut down this poly count as by the time I have finished counting all polys, I am up to over 18000 just for one complete 300 Class, and 20000 for just one complete 400 Class. I have tried the trick of removing any polys that won't be visible. Anyone have any suggestions please?. Are there any posts out there that might help also? Back to nutting this out, Cheers, Troy ------------------------------------------- 300 Class (#'s 300-341 spec) - 90% complete - not happy with bogies or texturing 400 Class ( #'s400-419 spec) - 80% complete - not happy with bogies, texturing, and .eng file
Hi there,This is one of those times when you ask yourself, Polys or performance ? I would go for the lower poly count, by creating a simple box and applying an alpha texture to it to simulate a bogie. You can build depth on a bogie by applying simple scaled boxes and texturing over it to produce a more realistic look. This would help you in keeping the poly count low. By all means you could still use your constructed bogies, but you would find the performance of your model would suffer in the sim and your FPS would drop like a stone.I know its a trade off to do it this way but you will not really notice the difference between a constructed bogie and a really good alpha texture.Just my two bobs worth.Cheers !
Models currently building: Westrail P Class (GE CM25-8) Queensland Rail 1300 Class Queensland Rail Diesel Tilt Train Tasrail ZC Class Tasrail Z/ZA/ZB Classes Tasrail D/DQ Classes
I helped Teemu in this way, reducing the poly count of some of his freight car models in half. Doing the face of the boogie as one square and using the alpha layer to define it's shape greatly reduces the poly count without sacrificing much in quality. You have to look quite close at it to tell the difference. With the poly count meantioned for the completed models you could not use many of those cars without a major hit in FPS. The joy of having an exact reproduction of the correct boogie is soon gone if you don't get a reasonably smoth performance in MSTS.
Hi Troy!I think a 3D Boogie looks better than a texture on a box. You see the difference at near and far view. For example, if you look at the GenP42Dc I created, each bogie have a poly count of 1314 triangles. The Main body have 364 triangles and was created with extrusion. The total engine have 6094 Faces, 9159 Points and 69 objects.Be careful with the round parts by lowering the faces to 8 faces. In Train Simulator, you will see the difference only at near distance.What 3D program are you using? I am using 3D Canvas 6 Pro.If I align 4 Genesis, I have a frame rate of about 25. If I align 16 of them, I have Fps 9 to 15. It is low but you will admit it is unreal to have 16 engines aligned.If you arrive at 18000 polys, did you reduce the polys on the body and all parts?P.S. Excuse my English, I am French speaking.Ti-Bob The_Genesis_ManWork in Progress: Amtrak Genesis P42Dc Québec Rail Route: In the Road phase.
I believe the answer lies in between. I use a box and texture for my bogies and add on parts for some raised detail. Sometimes I'll 3d model the bogie and then remove the left and right faces and replace them with a rectangular face. Looking down you see a curved bogie, but from the side, it's flat. In other words, you can go from a textured box to a full 3d model. What probably is best is something in between. Just how far in between or what end of scale you want is your call. Somewhere in between will bring your frame rates back up without sacrificing too much detail. Experiment!!! Dave
Here's the soloution that I've come up with. Use the extrusion tool (3d canvas) to make your basic bogie shape. Then delete all of the side faces and replace them with a single rectangular face that has been textured with an alpha chanel to make it match the 3d shape. It looks just like a 3d bogie but has a lot less polys.
Hi Troy,I use layered alphas to give depth without going overbaord on polys. My freeware v3.0 F's use around 300 or so polys per bogie, and you can down;load it here (or from my site) and have a look. Also, open the A1_Alpha.ace for the F to see how I arranged the bogie parts. Cheers! Marc - 3DTrains http://www.3dtrains.comPro Series SuperPacks
