Development:Model Guidelines

Development

Model Guidelines

Introduction

The intention of this document is to give artists using the Vega Strike engine some suggested guidelines to follow in creating models. These are not fixed rules, and those of you with experience will appreciate that many of these can be broken. For those of you who are either new to videogame modelling, or unsure of Vega Strike's capabilities, this may be of use. You may also wish to have a look at the corresponding texturing guidelines.

Note: If you wish to contribute a ship to the game Vega Strike, please see the 3D Models page and/or contact jackS.

Don'ts

• Please dont use any sort of meshsmooth or tesselation functions to get those LOD levels its just cheap and nasty.

Specification

FIXME Incomplete, unedited, inaccurate braindump:

With respect to vertex count/poly count .... it's at the artist's discression. Basically don't limit yourself on necessary detail, as LOD's can make up for any excess. We probably want one LOD <=500 polys, a couple more before you reach 10000, and then one for every extra 5000? This should be edited by people more in the know ;-)

I'd say, as a rough target, one would like something on the order of log_k(polgons in top level mesh) # of LODs (where k is dependent upon the particulars of the model)

Same texture maps for each is good (I *think*) ... as it reduces the texture memory needed (again I *think*)?

A seperate shield mesh is good, so is a collision mesh (collision may as well just be one of the lower LODs).

See Also

Development:Texture Guidelines