Graham (graham++at++beast)
Thu, 8 Feb 1996 23:45:25 -0800
General pointers:
1) You are very lucky in terms of H/w capability it really does not get much
better, with RM-5's you have 16 mb of texture memory at your disposal, unless
you are explicitely controlling texture paging, make sure all your texture fits
within this 16mb (see perfly as an example, when it loads models it tells you
how much T.M. you're using).
2) THere is no hard and fast rule, whether to quad-tree or whatever, BUT
spatially align groups so that they can be culled out quickly. An evenly
spaced grid can work if the database density is relatively consistent (most
aren't!) so it might make more sense to structure your hierarchy so that there
is similar number of polys clustered together.
3) Use LOD's, use them aggressively and use them everywhere (we really mean
it!), even a 1 polygon billboard tree is useless if its so far away its lost in
the fog or not contributing to the scene so switch it out.
4) Put your poly's where they count! If 70% of your scene is road and road side
clutter don't put a lot of detail in the houses on the side of the road, maybe
a simple facade would be enough.
We could write a novel here, but the Performer town is a good start, there is
another version called Performer toon, which is more highly tuned. Have fun,
and try out your models often in Perfly or what have you.
GB
On Feb 8, 9:39am, David Pugmire wrote:
> Subject: Modelling strategy Question
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm a fairly new multigen modeller, and am looking for pointers on
> what makes a good model design for display with performer.
> Are there any general rules of thumb
> for best performance ? Is the the town database a good structure to
> follow ? Do you make a big grid of the area you want to model and
> have a group for each cell, with any additional structure beneath ?
> Is a quad-tree structure best ?
>
> I'll be running it on a 1 pipe, 4 cpu 4 RM5 Onyx.
>
> Thanks,
>
> dp.
>
>-- End of excerpt from David Pugmire
--
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