Hi!
If I've got a high poly model, and I would like to reduce the poly count (for example from 20 000 to 3 000) which is the best way to reduce it? I've got 3DS Max 7 and Milkshape. I know about Direct-X meshtools from Milkshape but I don't think it's the best. So how can I reduce the poly count with the best result? Mainly in these two program but any other which is better than these would be good. I would like to use a free program but if you know a good pay I would try it. Thanks!

Max 5 and above have 2 modifiers that can do this. (not sure about the rest although they will have something similar)

The commonly used one is called "Optimise". (can't remember what the other one is called) It is very rarely that I have to use it at all and others will tell you that this is a last measure before modellers discard their models and start again!

The best way to ensure a low polycount is to model the object from a primitive like a box. Make every cut/division/edge/vertice count

To answer your question about reducing a models complexity from 20,000 poly's to 3,000 is absurd. I don't mean to be rude but I must make you aware that NO model for any game is anywhere near that amount of polygons.
Only models for films like "Shrek" and purposely 'realisitic' 3d models will have that many poly's or more.
If you were able to even have your computer to display such a complex image without using all of your virtual memory and causing the system to permanently hang so you have to reboot it would be impossible to reduce that amount of polygons and still be left with anything that even remotely resembles the original shape. All you would end up with is a blob!!

Even reducing a model from 3000 to 2000 poly's would cause major problems, if you are wanting high poly objects for the Sims 2 I suggest looking into normal mapping. This technique has been applied to some of the in-game models by Maxis.

Google "Normal mapping" or start cloning some normal mapped models in SimPE and check them out to see how it's done...

Thanks for your reply. But I mean the high poly models which are one the internet, and for example Wallsims and 4ESF uses them. There are a lot of free 3D models for expample at Turbusqiud, and a lot of Sims site uses these. These are very high poly, about 10-20 thousend, but these models on 4ESF are only 4-5 thousond poly (OK, the quality is way much worse). So I only wanted to know how they reduce the poly with relatively good result, which is the best way.

I've had good results even on fairly low poly objects to start with with the milkshape direct x tools. But I also had was told to reduce by something like 10% or 20% at a time, and repeat and repeat, until things didn't look good, which I did do.

'Quality' in this case is a relative term - sure with 2x or 4x the amount of polys, the object will look cleaner, but with good smoothing/normals you can get things that look pretty darned good that are ballpark of the amount of polys that Maxis uses.

Unfortunately, I don't have the others, so I can't compare. Probably the best thing for you to do is take the time to run the experiment yourself, including trying the difference between reducing a bit at a time vs large amounts.

As tiggerypum says the best way is small amounts at a time, also if the object is split into groups or you split it your self into groups then the parts that you consider warent the detail can be treated seperatly.

With all the free meshes available it is a shame that a lot of creater spend a few hours to put it in the game and then claim the have created it and hold a right to that object, where as others spend days getting them right from scratch. Most sites which offer free objects state that they are free for your own use but must not be redistributed; many creators are infringing this copywrite evan on donation sites. The best way is to use a free mesh for reference to see how it is formed.

You're right, I downloaded an office chair from a site and had to re-package it because it was in the lounge chair category (therefore sims couldn't use it with a table). The chair turned out to be 13,000 polys and I almost fainted!

Here's another suggestion, though I don't use 3d studio max. First, ungroup the object. Some of the high poly models tend to be multilayered --e.g. the 13,000 poly chair's cushion consisted of 10 layers of the same mesh (I'm not sure why this is so). So delete all layers except the outermost one. Then, to be extra efficient, delete all the faces of the parts that won't be visible in the game --e.g. the underside of the cushion, underside of the seat etc. (This takes forever and it's easier to make something from scratch!)

Finally,when you regroup the object, I'm pretty sure 3d studio max has options like 'merge vertex' or 'merge overlapping edges'. In the program I use, the user sets the distance of the vertices or edges to be merged --so if the distance is set to 0, then vertices/edges that are on top of each other will be merged hence less faces and so on..

You make lovely objects by the way.

Thanks for this info , i have an object with +14,000 vertices and +25000 faces, that i could not get into Simpe, now at least i can bring the amount down.



Wel actualy, Meshes for these movies had above 100,000 poly's and no, they don't crash systems. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to make it.

smithycpl

But movies aren't made in realtime but are rendered by renderfarms of networked computers. :D

Xanathon is right. My brother-in-law used to work for Pixar, the original models were made on high powered computers but the rendering was done by renderfarms (huge number of servers designed to do nothing but render complex graphics).

I will occassionaly cheat and use TurboSquid meshes, but you have to be very careful with them. Most of them are made for static rendering, not games. I find that those meshes are best to learn from but not to use for anything. The simplest thing to keep your poly counts down is to realize that the game isn't *that* detailed. You can add a tremendous amount of detail with your texturing, you don't have to put it into the mesh itself. Download some of my objects and dissect them to see what I mean. I would be happy to send you the original, unmerged meshes (and texture maps) if that would help you understand the process a bit more. Meshes are really only half of the equation when creating Sims2 objects - the other half is the detail and effort you put into your texture map! If you're good at one but not the other you'll really never be satisfied with the result. Hope that helps

I certainly agree on the rendering part but even i kan make objects with high polycounts in autocad and later on import them in milkshape. Even on verry low systemrequirements (512mb) i don't use this system much for 3D but i've worked on it for Call of duty meshes and believe me they where highly polygoned for a game (11,000-28,000).
The rendering is ofcourse done better in a server environment, way faster than one system.
But still 20,000 polygones isn't that high, to crash a single system these days.
I just made an object with 2,900 poly's from one with 25,000 for our website, just like Tigerypum suggested with the tools in milkshape, it still looks good, but the texturing will be though now.

HChangeri, will you be dooing more banking and hospitall stuff in the future?

smithycpl

I don't mean to be rude either but you're talking tripe, I've seen custom Sims 2 items with over 20000 polygons, its really too much for a single Sims 2 object, but its a very unexceptional number in meshing terms. After all, if your average Sims 2 object is 800 polygons say, according to your statement everyone's computer's should fall over as soon as they place more than 25 objects on a single lot!! My very ordinary 4 year old computer was perfectly happy letting me create models I made for my Sims 1 objects which often went over 100K polygons (because why not if you only need a nice render!). Besides Sim creating I also do a bit of meshing TES Morrowind and Oblivion add-ons, both games shipped with some seriously heavy weight models in them, Oblivion in particular (being newer) has a lot of items which have thousands of polygons, many of the building and architecture resources are a lot higher than 20K.

The Max optomise modifier is ok but its no real substitute for re-modeling from scratch, I find it does a poor job cleaning up after itself too, I always import to Milkshape and apply the Clean afterwards as it removes a shed load of triangles if I've given in and optomised. I often create an item once to get the design planned out and then over again to get the poly count down to something acceptable unless the design is very straightforward. Having an existing model that you didn't make does make life arkward in some ways, a) it makes it hard to plan an approach to re-creating it in a low poly format b) even if the optomise and clean and a bit of selective welding does do the trick you've still got to re-map it.

I think you will find that in every game static models are somtimes complex being in the region of 1500-2000 faces at the same time other static models are optimised to allow for realtime play. So to reitterate compromises are made for the complexity of objects in games, some of the sims 2 objects are very very simple and others like cars (being the heviest meshes) are not that simple but still within a certain limit.

What I was referring to is that people on public wesites don't usually have access to high powered machines capable of rendering super-complex meshes as agreed above. On the other hand the sims 2 has quite high basic running requirements, even higher than many other 3d games that are newer.
No game model will ever have over 20,000 polygons, if it does you will be seeing the normal map (projected image) this is an illusion. The normal mesh underneath the projection say for instance a character will be around 5000 faces and the normal map may be 1,000,000 faces maybe even more. This does not matter because the normal map is acting like a texture would and does not come with the consequences that would flatten your computer dead if it was an actual rendered mesh.

So no tripe there.

Also you mention reducing complexity, this is best achieved manually by edgelooping and removing then removing the verts bit by bit and no you don't have to remap it;

If you're not changing the shape of the original mesh by adding or removing parts that would result in an actual shape change (appearance) why change the UV's as they are already laid out for you?

theres a good poly reducer program for max you can get (not free though) it's called poly reducer. it's a plugin. as for high quality models most of the models i use always have at least over 2000 polys i use meshes from turbosquid all the time and i've never had 1 problem using them or reducing their polys. as long as your model is under 10000 polys you'll be fine. the sims 2 wasn't made anyway to run on old or slow computers if you want a decent experience playing the game than you need a fast computer. your wasting your time trying to play the game on less than 1 gb ram, slower than 1.5 ghz and a crappy graphics card you can play the game but you won't enjoy it since your alwasy looking over your shoulder trying to keep track of all the polys of every single object you ever download and what's on your lots, should i use this, oh i can't use that it will have too many polys and slow my game down... do yourself a favour and upgrade you'll thank yourself later.

Tornado - That modifier is news to me! Suppose I like doing things the hard way it seems like a more satisfying end result. Couldn't agree more on the computer and the faster the better especially with all of todays advanced games.
I think with the sims 2 apart from the characters skins which are the most advanced textures with SSS shaders most of the objects are relatively simple even in comparrison to most other games, althought the code for the game engine is way more advanced hence the requirements.

sorry it's called poly cruncher. can't remember where i got it but do a search. it's a very good poly reducer tool and easy to use.