Smooth edges/polys

[Ydoow]

I\'ve noticed that my models aren\'t as smooth as stock parts. I\'m not sure if this is because I\'m using fewer polys than them, or if there\'s some magical setting/modification I\'m overlooking.

My current tank (a cylinder) has about 60 surfaces excluding the top/bottom face (so 60 faces making a 360 degree circle) and then I apply Smooth Lighting before saving.

In-game it looks smooth, but after staring it down you can notice edges a bit. Not sharp, but there. I don\'t notice this with stock parts.

Any advice? Anything I can do to help you understand?

[Absolution]

60 faces for a given cylinder seems quite high based on what I\'ve seen from other works. This makes me concerned for my 18 face cylinder...

Can anyone shed some light on this topic, please?

[DYJ]

I can\'t remember the exact number but the vanilla cylindrical parts have somewhere around 18 faces, so more than that is not needed.

Smoothing will help a great deal keeping the cylinder looking cylindrical but won\'t do much for the edges, zoom in on stock parts and you can clearly see the edges.

What the stock parts have that you don\'t (I\'m assuming) is normal mapping, which can help a bit with giving the impression of a higher quality model, though I doubt that you can get normal maps to help with the edges anyway.

The only way to get around this is with dynamic tessellation, which essentially means that the graphics engine keep creating more and more polys the more you zoom in. This is however not supported in Unity yet as far as I know.

You probably want to post some pictures so we can see what\'s going on.

Tldr: 60 Sides is far more than you need, but no curved surface can ever be perfect in polygon based modeling.