Question: Continuity vs Multiple Elements

[Scicero]

I seem to see a lot more continuous meshes (B) rather than multiple element designs (A.) Is there reason to the madness? As far as I can see as long as the texture is mapped correctly, (A) would use less polygons and be preferable to (B.)


Which should be used in a portfolio?
(Yes this is for my port, I'll be sure to pimp it soon.:))


Figure A
http://img42.imageshack.us/i/polyg001.jpg/http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/3825/polyg001.jpg




Figure B
http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/7813/polyg002.jpg
http://img121.imageshack.us/i/polyg002.jpg/

[sprunghunt]

Figure A is a false economy. Game engines don't store faces they store vertices. So you could bridge across the vertices without affecting how big your model is in memory. Also a long face like in figure A will light badly (when using vertex lighting) due to the lack of vertex splits to define shadows.

I suggest you try and build your scene in a game engine. These problems will become more obvious when you're working under the constraints imposed by a game engine.

[Guriamo]

you should also consider adding a span to connect the seperate window columns, you got very thin and long tris there which is bad... and it wouldnt really add too many polygons.

[Scicero]

sprunghunt: Thanks, that explains a lot. I thought the problem, if any, would be engine related. So deleting a poly that doesn't affect the vert count is not effective?

Guriamo: I don't think I understand your suggestion. Are you suggesting that geometry B get cut across to make the tris more consistent and proportioned? If so, I've realized this myself and intend to finish/ rework it. Still needs some more doors and windows. Thanks.

[Snefer]

Sprunghunt, actually no. If the mesh was smooth shaded then that would be true, but since this is all hard edges you actually save quite a few vertices by doing like in figure A. Vertex lighting would be f-cked, true, but that is not used as much in current gen games though. On the other hand, you would probably get rendering artifacts, flickering, etc. Also alot of overdraw which isnt a good idea performance-wise. You would most likely have trouble with texturing aswell, you can't map it to tile in an efficient manner. My conclusion is: don't do it. It's worth those few extra vertices.

[Guriamo]

just a quick overpaint how i would connect the edges...

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1346659/polyg002b.jpg

[Mark Dygert]

I think you're modules are too small and you need to think about entire sections and floors of the building as a module. I think Guriamo is closer but I think the overall shape is not really set up to handle even sized modules.

[Guriamo]

yes, creating it in a modular way would be the right thing to do...