Anyone know a good technique for roof tiles?

[Erik Lund]

I'm trying to find a better technique for modeling roof tiles. I don't like to use textures for my roof tiles. So I model one, distribute it using the spacing tool, connect them all as one mesh, then boolean off the edges. But this realy eats up ram! It looks good, it's easy,and not a real hi poly count ( between 5,000-20,000 polys ) but it realy munches my resources. I did find that if I merge the roof into a sepearate file and model the tiles in that file, then save the tiles out as one object to a .3ds file then merge it into my main scene it won't use even a fraction of the ram that it would have if I modeled them within my main scene. Does anyone know why? I realy hate this issue!!!!

 

Please! Someone help!

 

[ May 10, 2002, 02:01 AM: Message edited by: Erik Lund ]

[Wolf]

Instancing is your ticket Eric

the way max works with instances is it only puts into ram what your scanline is touching, so it only needs to put 10-20% of the tiles into ram when rendering.

when you attach the lot, it makes 1 huge mesh and loads it all into ram.

 

also use LOD (level Of Detail) for your roof

works great for multi housing projects,

just group each resolution set, and then group all of them together.

The closest houses have the full on high poly count roof tiles, a medium res tile for further away shots, and just a flat mapped roof for distance shots.

LOD automatically loads up and fades between each mesh based on distance.

 

if your not sure about LOD i can post an example file if you like.

[Erik Lund]

Thanx for the tips, but it sounds like your adressing the rending time. That's not an issue. The issue is that I need to attach all the tiles as one mesh to be able to Boolean off the hips and valleys on the roof. But the moment I attach all the tiles as one mesh my ram usage shoots though the roof! Sometimes as much as 2Gigs!!!! It shouldn't do that.

 

This is a modeling issue, not a rendering issue.

But thanx for the tips, those will come in handy

 

[ June 19, 2002, 07:51 PM: Message edited by: Erik Lund ]

[Wolf]

The trouble with booleans, is they destroy the mesh, making it impossible to change anything, while at the same time creating a huge file size.

 

If we start with a spline outline of 1 Tile, apply a bevel profile to it, its about 300k in file size

 

and then make an array of References. apply an xform to rotate the tiles slightly.

Use a Slice modifier on the array of tiles, instead of boolean.

 

apply a uvwmap to the whole lot, and texture it up,

and the file size is around 600 - 800 k

due to using refences

if you booleaned this, it would be around 10-20 meg

 

Heres the cool part, at any stage can you adjust the level of detail, by going below the stack to the original spline or rectangle, and changing its interpolation steps, to make it low res or as high res as you want.

and you only need to change the Master object(s)

 

now build a low res roof replacement out of a box or something, and xref out the high res, and bind it to the low res. map a top view of the roof to the low res box, so you can see the roof texture.

 

now your viewort only sees a 12 sided polygon , instead of a 80,000 poly roof, that comes up at render in about a minute on scanline, using little memory.

 

if you have a suburb to model, using LOD would also be a good way to handle these models.

 

well goodluck... i have the Saturday rush to content with, so i better get back to my things

 

heres some quick pics and files showing you what i mean...

my site stoppped direct linking, so u gotta copy & paste the link

 

artistnation.com/members/paris/thewolfslair/roof.html

 

Regards

Wolf

[Erik Lund]

Ya, I hate using booleans. I never use them on anything other than the technique i described earlier. They are messy and not very reliable. Although I have found that if I am only using a boolean to slice a strait line through a model, convert to editable mesh,and delete the unwanted half the results are usually pretty good. The key is to use a triangular plane (one face) for the boolean, not a square plane.

 

But I realy like your suggestion. I will try that. It would be a great technique for simple square tiles. But i'm afraid that technique isn't pratical for more complexly shaped tiles. I need to be able to trim off the hips and valleys.

Thanx again for the tips!

 

BTW, i'm not able to open your website. I'd realy like to see your examples.

 

[ May 10, 2002, 02:54 PM: Message edited by: Erik Lund ]

[Wolf]

with a slice modifier, you dont need to use booleans

 

Ive sent you the file,

not sure why you cant see the site i posted

maybe you need to put a http://www. in front of the url, cause it works on my end.

 

doing web html i find is like making a sphere in 3d, but if you dont name the sphere right, use CAPITALS, ot leave a space instead of an underscore, your scene doesnt render

 

i think 3d is much easier LOL

 

[ May 10, 2002, 07:58 PM: Message edited by: Wolf ]

[theboot]

Wolf,

really cool and useful tip on roof techniques.

Congrats and thank u so much!

 

theboot

[AHaidar]

Erik

Could you post an example of what type of tiles give you problems when using the slice modifier? I've used the slice technique on various types of tile shapes without having any problems.

If you are going to stick with the booleans I would suggest a simple modification to your procedure. Instead attaching all of the tiles to make one mesh attach only the tiles that need to be cut. This will save some resources (make sure you have instanced your tiles) and preserve the stacks on the un-booleaned tiles.