KSP Part Poly Counts... Suggestions / recommendations

[Lillegre]

Hello!

Lillegre of Lilligre Special Research Projects here! I have been having lots of fun blowing Jebediah up in a number imaginative and interesting ways, but now, I am modelling up my 1st parts pack.

So my question is this, anyone have any suggestions, recommendations, or links to anything to do with Poly count? I have modelled for games before, I know most of the good stuff, like pipes do not render visual better after 6 faces and can make poly efficient models. I am assuming, 500 - 1K for a mid size part max?

I will mainly be concentrating on structural sections and other module repacks (into new, interesting forms that I want to use). I intend the releases to visually match stock parts, as well as game values being in the "realistic" range.

Hit me with "the knowledge"

Lillegre

Edited June 1, 2013 by Lillegre
Inability to spell my own name consistently

[Bluegobln]

Honestly, from what I have seen, you can pull off parts with quite a bit larger poly counts than that (I've made as high as 8000 I think). Poly count isn't a huge limiter in most GPU's nowadays I'm pretty sure, it's the textures, the other graphic effects, those are what matter. If you have a large part with LOTS of little intricate details, one trick I've quickly learned is a huge part of how a part performs (especially if animated) is whether shadows are enabled for smaller parts. For example: I recently made a large animated folding shield thing, the hinges are there but they caused HUGE lag when animated because they had shadows. I disabled both shadows and specular highlights on them and now they perform considerably better (they still accept other object's shadows since that appears to be much less demanding on GPU).

It is important if you have a complex model that you use either convex collision or a much simpler collision mesh.

If you want some examples of really rather high poly parts, check out the THSS pack linked in my sig. The parts are all pretty high poly, especially the adapters with round attach points. For the most part there are no actual textures used on them, they're just models with color.

[Lillegre]

Honestly, from what I have seen, you can pull off parts with quite a bit larger poly counts than that (I've made as high as 8000 I think). Poly count isn't a huge limiter in most GPU's nowadays I'm pretty sure, it's the textures, the other graphic effects, those are what matter. If you have a large part with LOTS of little intricate details, one trick I've quickly learned is a huge part of how a part performs (especially if animated) is whether shadows are enabled for smaller parts. For example: I recently made a large animated folding shield thing, the hinges are there but they caused HUGE lag when animated because they had shadows. I disabled both shadows and specular highlights on them and now they perform considerably better (they still accept other object's shadows since that appears to be much less demanding on GPU).

It is important if you have a complex model that you use either convex collision or a much simpler collision mesh.

If you want some examples of really rather high poly parts, check out the THSS pack linked in my sig. The parts are all pretty high poly, especially the adapters with round attach points. For the most part there are no actual textures used on them, they're just models with color.

Hi Bluegobln,

I must admit to being a fan, I have played extensively with your stuff and I'll be honest, your work was part of my reason to start work on KSP mods, I love the idea of well thought through sets. Alternatively, my question could have been "what is the poly count of the THSS regular strut?"

I am just finishing off a schweet 1.25m animated door cargobay atm;it is coming in at 472 tris, just working through getting it from Blender to Unity to KSP.

My current sticking point is how to render UV's for the anim components, but I am sure I'll sort that soon

Regards

Lillegre