CIV4 unit model vertex limit

[Gearbolt38]

Hi there

Just wondering if I should go on with this dae.model made up of more than 40k vertex, my last modeal had like 5k vertex.

Am I wasting time with something that won't work in game in the end?

Cheers

P.S Already applied a 10k vertex reduction

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I am not sure if there is a limit as to how many vertices the game can render. Although more is definitively going to slow the game down. But that is not really something you should be concerned about anyway as you are going to hit a visual fidelity wall long before you hit a rendering cap. Put simply the average model is, on a modern monitor, going to take up about as much space as maybe a centimeter squared, two for larger units. There isn't really a point to having huge models with HD textures and 10's of thousands of polygons for that sort of scale.All you'll be doing is wasting your time and peoples hardware on something that won't really be seen.

For reference, here are some default civ units:
Warrior: 1641 pixels
Battleship: 1923 pixels
Horse archer: 1314 px (horse), 1716 px (rider)
And they all use 128x128 textures with the occasional 256x256 thrown in.

As for my own work, even the most complex of my models newer go above 5k. They usually hover around the 3k mark. And that's only because ships by their nature have lots of moving parts like rigging and sails that take up pixel space.

Bottom line is when it comes to modding old games like CIV4 less is more and the art is in figuring out how to squeeze fidelity out of your texture design more than adding pixels.

Edit: I just measured one of my more complex designs and it has 3639 px and weighs a whopping 127kb. I might need to consider trimming that one down actually.

 

[Gearbolt38]

Cheers! I will come up with something else then.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

My advice is to look at the units in the game as well as those uploaded by other people to get a feel for things. I for example have an entire giant module worth of hundreds of units at this point that you could look at. Than there is also varietas delectat as another giant pack.

 

[MightyToad]

I can confirm there definitely is a limit on what blender will export as a nif. I don't remember how many vertexes, but I would guess 10k.
You can run the decimate script to reduce the complexity. Your 40k model is probably a hopeless case I'm afraid.

 

[SaibotLieh]

I can confirm there definitely is a limit on what blender will export as a nif. I don't remember how many vertexes, but I would guess 10k.
You can run the decimate script to reduce the complexity. Your 40k model is probably a hopeless case I'm afraid.

You can go higher (sometimes necessary for leaderheads), but you will have to activate "Export Skin Partition" in the nif export menu.

Altogether I would certainly advise to go for "low-poly" units with "low-res" textures like PPQ said. This way, you will also be forced to a degree to mimic the quality of the other Civ4 units and your model will fit better to the general style given by the vanilla game.

 

[MightyToad]

 

[Gearbolt38]

XDD

Ok guys will use this one, will add few weapons there and there, some cuts here and there

This one definitely will work, an imported .dae file, planning to add a rifle ( attack1 ), rail gun ( attack 2) and shoulder rocket launcher ( attack 3), will take few days

P.S Actually scrap the idea for now, I will work on a different version of the my first unit

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Just remember that all animations have to fit within exact fixed durations as set by the original game or else nothing will work.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I don't usually double post. But I found something that might put what we are talking about into perspective. So I thought I should share it here.
These are the system requirements CIV4 was designed to run on:

CPU: Pentium 4 or Athlon XP
CPU SPEED: 1.2 GHz
RAM: 256 MB
OS: Windows 2000/XP
VIDEO CARD: 64 MB 3D Video Card with Hardware Transform & Lighting (NVIDIA GeForce2+ / ATI Radeon 7500+)
TOTAL VIDEO RAM: 32 MB
3D: Yes
HARDWARE T&L: Yes
DIRECTX VERSION: DirectX version 9.0c (included) or higher
SOUND CARD: Yes
FREE DISK SPACE: 1.7 GB
CD-ROM: 4X Speed CD/DVD-ROM

So when we say use low polygon models and small textures THIS is what we are talking about. If you make a model that the hardware described above can't render fluidly on screen in hundreds of iterations odds are the games code won't like it either simply because modern hardware might be much better but the code using it is the same as it ever was.

 

[MightyToad]

So when we say use low polygon models and small textures THIS is what we are talking about. If you make a model that the hardware described above can't render fluidly on screen in hundreds of iterations odds are the games code won't like it either simply because modern hardware might be much better but the code using it is the same as it ever was.

P.S Actually scrap the idea for now, I will work on a different version of the my first unit

What I've done in the past, and what I would probably do in this case, is use the model as a template for a new one. It is much easier to trace out the basic outline from the model than it is to try to make one from a 2D picture. Of course you still have to UV and texture. Which is sometimes far more difficult than you would think. Something to think about anyway.

 

[Gearbolt38]

What I've done in the past, and what I would probably do in this case, is use the model as a template for a new one. It is much easier to trace out the basic outline from the model than it is to try to make one from a 2D picture. Of course you still have to UV and texture. Which is sometimes far more difficult than you would think. Something to think about anyway.

Actually found an easy way to texture complex models, I just divide the mesh in different parts , texture them differently and then join everything back in the same scene later with Append/Link function. Also to texture my first model I used UW smart mapping for each part of the body, followed by body paint to correctly give the correct vertex group to each bone.

Will make a new skeleton and this time will add a MD ground bone as origin to allow better animation of the lower body , will pay more attention to the timing of the animations , I used :

21 frames for Attack 1 and Attack2 , both starting from frame 1 still....I noticed a 1/2s "frame invisibility" for the unit when attacking and need to figure out where is the delay, I suspect it's with between the attack animations and Hurt. The strange thing is that this "glitch" only happens randomly, sometimes the unit attacks, die etc perfectly and other time the "1/2s invisible glitch" happens

Using a mini-gun and second attack, double shoulder cannon for ranged bombardment

 

[Gearbolt38]

I don't usually double post. But I found something that might put what we are talking about into perspective. So I thought I should share it here.
These are the system requirements CIV4 was designed to run on:


So when we say use low polygon models and small textures THIS is what we are talking about. If you make a model that the hardware described above can't render fluidly on screen in hundreds of iterations odds are the games code won't like it either simply because modern hardware might be much better but the code using it is the same as it ever was.

Noted ! My current "experiment" is using 6.2k vertex , found units with similar or close vertex count like the Atlas Mecha somebody converted from Mass Effect

 

[PPQ_Purple]

.

WTH man?

 

[MatteM]

This discussion really is dependent on what you define as "High poly", my mod has lots of units with around 3000-5000 polys, mostly ships that are that complex, I am dependent on converting models from other games really so there really are no lowpoly alternatives a lot of times, and the ones I have converted usually has meant a lot of work to lower the complexity. But I enjoy this stuff, and it is not like I would have the time to create 200+ shipmodels from the steam-era from scratch. I am not sure that the standard vanilla Civ 4 units always are a good template for design, usually you can just rip the same but much better models and textures from Android-games with the same amount of polys. The beautiful thing with the Gamebryo is that it so easy converting stuff and getting into the game, I don't see Civ 5 or Civ 6 coming anywhere near the low barriers to entry that Civ 4 has

 

[MightyToad]

WTH man?

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I am confused. I hate being confused. I also hate memes. Especially image memes. At least it' isn't a gif. I hate gif memes the most.

 

[Gearbolt38]

This discussion really is dependent on what you define as "High poly", my mod has lots of units with around 3000-5000 polys, mostly ships that are that complex, I am dependent on converting models from other games really so there really are no lowpoly alternatives a lot of times, and the ones I have converted usually has meant a lot of work to lower the complexity. But I enjoy this stuff, and it is not like I would have the time to create 200+ shipmodels from the steam-era from scratch. I am not sure that the standard vanilla Civ 4 units always are a good template for design, usually you can just rip the same but much better models and textures from Android-games with the same amount of polys. The beautiful thing with the Gamebryo is that it so easy converting stuff and getting into the game, I don't see Civ 5 or Civ 6 coming anywhere near the low barriers to entry that Civ 4 has

The thing is I am using a poly reduced script on blender, I'd like something more specific to immediately reduce the poly count to the bare minimum, I bet the model in my OP got like 35k vertex worth of unnecessary details. I will try to remove all unnecessary details next time, I can manually delete parts in edit mode with the vertex select but for now I want a 100% working mecha unit in game , the one I posted weeks ago is like ...95% working because of the occasional invisible frame glitch

 

[PPQ_Purple]

My advice is to give up on any sort of automated vertex reduction and just design the model from the ground up to be low polygon in the first place. Otherwise you are trying to shove a square peg into a round hole and will forever be met with frustration.

Remember low polygon isn't just about reducing the number of points that make up your model. It's about all sorts of tricks to save on having geometry in the first place. Stuff like leaving the bottom side of vehicles open or having the rigging on a ship be a simple flat surface with a rope texture on top or having holes not be holes but transparency effects. Stuff like that is where you get the real savings. And to do those right you have to consider them right at the design stage.

 

[MightyToad]

I am confused. I hate being confused. I also hate memes. Especially image memes. At least it' isn't a gif. I hate gif memes the most.