TDR Car creating and Optimizing

[keroltarr]

[font color="#FFFF00">Howdy folks</font color>,

[font color="white">

Yall may not think that I am qualified to post on this subject since I haven't release but one car and a crappy one at that... but I have learned alot about making cars for TDR that have yet to be displayed to [font color="#FF0000"> </font color> the general populace (sp?). I'm going to list a few things about how to optimize a car's mesh for better performance in TDR.

[font color="yellow">

TDR has alot of realistic features for such an arcadish style of game. One of these realistic but useless features is that a car can have a hood or trunk-lid (bonet or hatch) which pops open when the car is damaged in that area. This eyecandy serves no purpose in this style of game (in my opinion) so I recomend attatching these loose parts to the main body mesh. You will save on vertexes if you weld them as well.

</font color>

After you have removed any possiblity of the bonnets opening then you can procede to remove (delete) what's inside: engine, engine compartment, trunk, spare tire, etc. This is where the real benifit shows up. Beroc (LOD) has repetedly explained that the more vertexes you have in one area the less stable the game will run using that car. Thus, the primary culprit of an unstable TDR is an addon car with a highly detailed engine or any high detail in a damageable area of the car.

[font color="yellow">

Heck, if you want to simplify further, I would recommend attatching and optionaly welding the doors shut as well. Openable doors have almost as little purpose as openable bonnets. Opening your car's doors will not win a race nor will it win a free-for-all.

</font color>

Next I would recommend that you make the windows opaque and remove the driver model and all the internals of the car including seats, steering wheel, and anything that is only visible throught the windows. You might want to keep the dash for the in-car-view. And dont worry about your opaque windows preventing you from seeing outside as long as the window texture is NOT two-sided and the normals are facing outward you will still see fine.

</font color>

Ok, now I will sit back and wait for comments on my radical point of view.

later,

[font color="#00FF00">Lewy T</font color>/[font color="red"> Keroltarr</font color>

[Beroc-Lord of Destruction]

BWahhahahaaahahaaaaaa... ahahahhawww... ahawahaww ahwhahwhawahahahahaaaaa....



Whew... now that that is...

baaahahaaaa ahaaahaaaa hhaaaaaahahahhaaaahhhahahah

Damn that was funny.

OK, let me explain some stuff... So that your theory doesnt spread and we all make really, REALLY boring cars....

TDR has some probs with vert caching, which cause it to bomb, so... in theory, less verts=stable car.... Well, yes and no. I just produced a Bus, which defies what you were talking about. Knowing that TDR has a vert caching problem was the key. The bus has just over 6000 polys... and a hell of a lot of verts... Now the problem isnt the number of verts, but vert clumps. TDR doesnt care how many doors you have, nor how many Bonnets, nor Pivotal detaches... It could care less... However, you go overboard making detail in an engine.... You smack it in the front right where all those verts are for the engine, and blam, you blow up. Same goes with interior... You make it too detailed, and it blows. Now This bus... well, it has a bunch of detail, however, none of the true detail is in the engine... Yeah, yeah, it has 5 sided pipes, and a tall intake. I could have went a bit further and added more detail... As a matter of fact, I was planning on making alot more stuff on the Bus... but got a bit discouraged when my polycount was rising over 6k. Kinda the "I have been in this boat before" thing. Well, what makes this Bus different from say, one of the ElCamino's, is Vert concentration. TDR takes a look at the Dcol, or data meshes, in Max terms, and says, this face is associated with these vertices... you move this vert this much, these verts move this much.... And... Most of the time, this works out fine. In the case of the ElCamino's, there was a huge Vert clump in the front of the car. Namely the engine. Wayyyyy too detailed. So, when you hit something really hard, the game crashes. What this has to do with, in my opinion is the number crunching of the game. It says, I have to move 1500 verts, this amount, and either creates a wrap around effect, meaning that that is too many verts for its workspace to handle, so it wraps them around, or it cannot finish the job before the next render cycle. Another possible problem is that it doesnt finish by the render cycle, and then dumps more information on top of what it already has, in effect overwriting data. Now this isnt a problem for low detailed cars like the originals, however, it is a major bug for people who are creating high poly stuff later. And that is the core of the Vert caching problem.

Now how it relates to what we are doing, and why we shouldnt listen to this bit of advice. You make a car that is devoid of Vert Clumps... Like the Bus, and it is incredibly detailed, and stable. Bonnets, Doors and Pivots dont make a bit of difference, cos after all, they no longer deform after they are opened.

Older machines, like P2's and stuff, with older graphics cards will choke a bit, but hell, who has that stuff anymore anyhow? Another problem/cause, is Dcol Vert clumping. This is simply too much detail on the main body data mesh. It is not a bombing error, but it slows the game down to calculate that much movement over that many squares. I could show you excellent examples of over tweaked, under tweaked and perfect data meshes.. After all, that is what I have been doing here for about 2 years.

Your best bet as far as setups is concerned, is to build cars... lots of em... Know how to build a good car, and know what makes a bad one. Welding all the verts together makes a bad playing car, not a good optimized car. Making things over detailed... bad, making details spread across the car.... good. Making lots of polys on the data mesh.... bad, optimizing your data mesh to deform in high impact areas, but leave the rest low...... good.

[keroltarr]

Ok,

I didnt mean to imply that movable parts such as bonnets and doors had any affect on performance or stability. My point is that if you can HIDE a highly detailed part of the car such as the engine then why not remove it as well. You'll reduce your polycount as well as vert-clumps; not to mention needing less memory for texturing it. I still think that having your hood pop open when you hit something is an unnesesary visual effect.

Perhaps making windows opaque and removing all the insides of the car is going a bit too far but I for one don't peer through the windows of my car and admire the leather seats or floor mats.

later

Keroltarr

[Beroc-Lord of Destruction]

Well, part, if not most of what I do is make cars that are appealing to me... that involves some measure of detail, becuase I like detail.... There are ways to reduce polycount, and skimp on various sections of Geometric detail, I have used quite a few of them in building cars as of late.. Part of the enjoyment of Carmageddon is watching pieces of your car fly off in every direction, having to contentd with the door hitting stuff and messing up your driving. That is part of what I enjoy. If you do still think that this detail is unnessecary, just try to waste 3 cars on a free driving map without repairing. If you constatnly repair, your right, you dont need any detail, why bother, after all, just more crap to get in the way of running over peds, but if you are like me, and want to see just how bad a car can get before being wasted.. detail is very important.

[Lieutenant Crix Makine Designs]

I agree with some of the points, namely that highly detailed engines and interiors are sometimes a waste of polys (IMHHHO), but I don't think that means you should go for removing them entirely. True, many of us with RecSpec systems can choke on some of the more detailed cars around, but they ARE the exception. Most of the best cars around are generally considered 'art pieces', and the creator will try to show off exactly how detailed (s)he can be, so of course they WILL be high-poly. ADR's cars in C2 are heading that way, certainly, and so are some of the later LOD cars, but I think it's a fair trade off. If I want nicer cars, I accept that occasionally my frame rate will suffer. I just see it as the price I pay for getting more life out of an old game, and getting all these FREE (which is a discussion in itself) extras.

I think if my cars ever get finished, they'll be detailed outside, with low poly engines/interiors - my intention is to create cars that look good but won't strangle a GeForce II. There's a lot to be said for lower polys and letting the textures do the detail work, if you want to simply play the game rather than be bowled over by the graphics.

[Beroc-Lord of Destruction]

There was a point where I went into contention with ADR's high poly stuff.... I did alot of stuff, made all kinds of intricate details. I would get it into the game, and frame rate would not suffer.... (I use a GeForce II MX). But the game would eventually crap out, and crash. That did nothing but piss me off. So cars that were made from about a year or so ago, to the ones about 6 months ago were "Art pieces", not "Game pieces". After converting some of ADR's cars, and doing a lot of testing, I found that the high poly stuff was causeing the game to crash. So, I decided to start making cars that were less Artsy and more Game stable.... The meld let cars like Violator, which was a little over 4k polys, which was very artsy, but still game stable. Cruel bus clocked in at 7k polys and is incredibly stable in the game. I found that it wasnt nessecarily how many polys, as how many verts, and where.

[Lieutenant Crix Makine Designs]

So is it a case of spreading verts more evenly over the shape, rather than using 100 polys per headlight or some such?

[Beroc-Lord of Destruction]

You got it, it is like TDR cant move over a certain number of verts at one time. So if you made a headlight with 100 polys, it would be like 66 verts, I think, that coupled with the front, engine other headlight, anything else that may be within that area, and you can kiss your sweet game goodbye... I generally stick with 8 poly headlights, and maybe 8 underneath for a reflection base. using alphas to create the illusion of a cool headlight.

[codemonkey]

what program do you use for creating cars? i use Gmax.

[Mustang]

for TDR you can only used 3d max 3.1 but i believe beroc knows what to import to where to get your file from gmax to 3d max which i would like to know ... again

[codemonkey]

i was told you can just make the car in gmax and save it in assets write the code for it. such as what falls off then it should work. if this doesnt work the car i have been working on for 3 days will all be in vain!

[Beroc-Lord of Destruction]

Everything you have done.... Is in vain, Though there are methods of exporting things to setup things for TDR, They involve, exporting as a MDL(quake model), then using Max's MDL converter to import it, then set the whole thing up in Max 3.1(not 4, 5, 6 or 7). Not really worth the effort. However, you do gain some experience working in the Max environment in Gmax. After all, what better way to train people to use Max, then to give them a fully functional(except the export and rendering gadgets) version of the program for free. A good move by Discreet.

Using Gmax though, is a little different then using Max 3.1,the Gui is more like version 4+. I do all of my poly work in 3.1, all game work in 3.1, any extrenuose conversion in whatever version is nessecary. After all, you can always open an earlier version of a max file in max, but you can't open a later version. That's what they made 3ds files for.

Good to bring up this old post though, it covers quite a bit about vert theory in TDR, what is really not covered in any of the tutorials.

[codemonkey]

doesnt 3d max cost £400! i cant be buying this!

[Dark Angel]

*cough*who buys it*cough*

[Kitteh]

Yeah, it only took me a few seconds to 'obtain' it.

[codemonkey]

i cant download it. whenever i try to download anything my computer says cannot find website. please try later. and i have been trying to download stuff for a week now! sorry for turning this into a computer repair discussion!

[Beroc-Lord of Destruction]

Now, Now, we aren't supposed to be talking about downloading pirated software here....

[Dark Angel]

Its alright if you put *cough* *cough* quotes when you talk about it, then its known as just a hint and not actualy talking about it.

[codemonkey]

LOL. *cough* nice pic *cough*

[Deathrow]

*Gasp*

Now the world knows of TDR's dirty vertex secrets!