Can the PA engine handle NURBS based models?? I use NURBS Surfaces in a lot of my models instead of poly's, will i need to convert all my models to poly before attempting to convert them to FBX and PAPA.
For those who don't know what i'm talking about. I use Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline points to model my objects. They create curved or flat surfaces based on an algorhythm, this allows me to make a complex looking model out of a small amount of points. Here's a link with some info's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-uniform_rational_B-spline
All good, i figured it out myself, yeah i gotta convet to poly .. lol NURBS way to hardcore on GPU to add ingame , just good for animation softwares.
OMG my poly modeling skills are sad.. lol And converting from NURBS to Poly make the end model very un-appealing. *sighs* gotta re-build models from scratch if i wanna use them for PA.
Yeah i just gotta improve my poly modeling skills, evrything i make in poly is usually very sharp/hard edged, very blocky looking. I can make things more curved and smooth looking out of lego
I suppose when you spend so long using nurbs to model it becomes a habit. Being able to create a curve or smooth surface using just 2 points and a few digits in a box killed my poly modeling skill hardcore. I think i have been modeling with NURBS for about 7 years now, it a second nature to use it instead of manipulating polys.
I have never used NURBS myself in anything game related only Animation, i was just heaps curious about it tho, CSG is an old animation/CAD technuiqe that has been adapted to gaming so i was wondering if the old Quake 3 style nurbs to poly on the fly might ever be used in games again .. lol
LOL. It was probably a dumb thing for me to ask/post in the first place as i was able to sort of answer the question myself. But it kept me entertained for 10 minutes while i figured it out.
Yes and no. Yes, PA can handle models built using NURBs. No, PA will not support rendering of NURBs. NURBs and Subdivision surfaces were the two techniques that battled for supremacy for curved surface modelling. Subdivision surfaces effectively won that war in part because we've gotten so damn good at rendering triangles that the main advantage of NURBs (that being you don't need polygons to render them, just math) is now moot when we just convert them to triangle meshes to render anyways. This is true even for rendering them in most professional rendering tools! Subdivision surfaces, especially with the OpenSubdiv stuff from Pixar, are easier to deal with since they work with regular polygon editing tools and don't have the quad surface requirements of NURBs. This is also related to the whole "tessellation" thing the last 2 generations of DirectX has been trying to push. But to answer the original question less nebulously: a model built using NURBs can be used in PA, if said model is converted to triangle polys.
edited last post was meant to ask this, what the poly count on a unit should be for best performance.. lol What do the artists at uber aim for at poly count for the average unit, just the lowest they can get while keeping it looking good, or a specific number?
Depends on the unit, but our commanders are 4,000 ~ 10,000 polys, normal units and buildings below 2,000 (most are below 500). It's one of the reasons why using NURBs is bad for our game though, NURBs models are usually for non-realtime rendering where it's okay if a screw head is 100,000 polys.
My simplest of NURBs model convert down to about 10k+ polys i have to subdivide so many times it becomes ugly. So im sorta better off creating from scratch using blocks with many segments and manipultaing the vertice into the shape im after.
also i would like to state the only reason i make a cube then reshape it is because i suck a joining vertices I ALWAYS miss vertices and have gaps in my models and i just generally suck at doing it lol. Also its most probably the reason i stuck to doing things with NURBs as it was way easier for me to make nice looking things in 3d without all the joining surfaces and reshaping issues from using standard vertices.
I used to model in NURBS back in the day (I did all the characters for Enter the Matrix on PS2 using all spline modeling since PS2's vector unit supported splines) but prefer to model with quads these days. Use Edit Poly and its tools and you'll get the hang of it. If you're worried about joining vertices, setup a shortcut key for Collapse under Edit Poly and it'll always join two or more selected vertices.
