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Sometimes I have to make compromises when adding details to trucks as well...curse this game's vertex/poly limits! (shakes his fist at nobody in particular...

Perhaps you can replace some of the girders I marked in red with 2D textures using transparent faces, and leave the vertical columns that sit close to the road as 3D models. That way, it will still look good from afar and close up without requiring so many vertices




(you most likely won't notice the area I marked in red when you are crossing the bridge anyway, but you do see the vertical beams, so that portion of the bridge I marked can be done in 2D with little loss of quality)

I had to make a similar compromise when I added sparkplug cables to one of my cars....I noticed that the cables were only visible from certain angles,so I was able to make them successfully using flat 2D transparent textures, while leaving the rest of the engine model in 3D form. Making the cables as 3D models would have added hundreds of polys/vertices to the total.


I also used flat surfaces and transparent textures to make an ultra-low vertex frame...the same frame done with 3D "tubes" was more than double the vertex count of the 2D model (136 vert. versus 388 for the 3D frame)

Thanks for the suggestions. I've just merged the close vertices (and yes, making backups is indeed a good idea!). I've still got 1523 vertices though...

The transparant face thing sounds good, although I have to learn how to make transparant faces first. Is there a good tutorial for that?

> I've still got 1523 vertices though...

Yea, that's a tad high. Can you make it available someplace, I wouldn't mind a closer look.

> Is there a good tutorial for that?

All black on the texture is transparent. All other colors are not transparent. That's all there is to it.

http://cownap.com/~mtmg/binedit/transparent.html
http://cownap.com/~mtmg/binedit/cleanup.html

Thanks for the links to the tutorials. I think those will be very helpful.

I've just sent you a PM, btw.

I gotta say, I'm impressed. Very nice modeling job you've done there.


<center><img src="http://mtm2.com/~forum/images/waalbrug_complete_beta6d.gif" width="600"></center>


But I can see where the verts have piled up. I think if it was me, I'd remove the angle parts in the top left frame above - they don't seem to share verts with anything else, so you can probably make up a lot of ground with those. And I don't think you'll lose much visuals from the road below; and if you do, then maybe you can lay in some flat faces with transparency. It would be a shame to remove the angle supports in the lower right shot.

I resized it down to 23 feet long and merged verts within 2 editor units and got it down to 1400. After resizing back up it looked pretty much the same. I tried to go closer but we begin to collapse faces so that's no good.

In a nutshell, not enough faces share the same verts with other faces.

<center><img src="http://mtm2.com/~forum/images/waalbrug_complete_beta6d2.gif" width="563"></center>

In this pic, you have 12 verts where you can get away with only six if you bring the bars down to a common point. Same for the upper joints. And same thing up in the middle where those top bars meet - you have eight in most cases but could reduce to four. This would be a lot more work, I think, but the results might be closer to what you're after.

Another idea would be to make the angle supports - on the sides and along the top - two sided only. They'd still be very visible, but the bridge would retain it's look, and if you share the verts, you could practically cut the total down to a third.

Thanks for the suggestions. I think I'll try to move some beams closer to each other to be able to merge more vertices. I'll just do it step by step.

It's good that I get to learn all these things. It will save me a lot of work when I make the other - blue - bridge. I can keep these things in mind when working on it.