Meshing/Skoping Advice Corner

[Tomato]

Ok, so, I've been noticing some little things from several different members of the community... nothing horrific or anything, but I feel like they should be addressed. I figured I'd make this thread for skopers and meshers... not really for tutorials, per se, but just to give certain critique or advice out to the public. Anyone is free to add advice, or to comment on someone else's... but please, be respectful. Don't point someone out specifically (For instance: "Cas needs to watch the purple in his skopes, lest he be slain by dragons" is inappropriate... even though he is only a champion, he shouldn't be called out) or get nasty because someone pointed out a failing... we all want to be better, mk? Good.

I have a few things in mind to cover at some point or another, but I'll start off with something I consider important: Polygon count. With the upsurge of people being able to add meshed pieces via nifskope, I've noticed certain of the pieces showing up are needlessly complex. As someone who has put together meshes for games such as Half Life, I will tell you that one of the things meshers need to keep in mind is to keep the detail level of the game in mind... FF base meshes, if I recall right, circle around 1,200 polys. As much as I can appreciate wanting to add details, it seems absurd to add a mask piece that on it's own adds ~14,000 polys, or see an armband that has easily double the necessary polys needed (a cylindrical wristband only needs about 6 sides to match the arm, 12 to look appropriately rounded. I see one with 24+ sides, and I get a bit irritable.)

I'm not trying to be a grinch here... I'm very liberal when it comes to complicating a mesh when I need to add detail (as a for instance, the male mesh I posted earlier wasn't looking right around the diaphram, so I cut a new edge loop). But this needless detail... more then "not helping" with the mesh, it actually reaches into the realm of looking bad. I don't know about you, but when I look at a Male Basic mesh with a wristband almost perfectly rounded, it accentuates the low-poly nature of male basic more then it adds to to mesh itself. Beyond that though, not everyone has a computer capable of the detail necessary for a 100,000 poly mesh piece... not just because of hardware capability, but also due to the sheer size. Every Poly adds, roughly, about a tenth of a KB to your nif file. One 10,000 poly piece will bump something from the KB range straight to the MB range.

My advice? By all means go nuts with your detail, but be smart about it. If a mesh needs a tiny sphere in it(say, a detail for a starfire mesh or somesuch), you don't need to use a high-quality ball, just enough of a shape to satisfy your needs. Shouldn't need more then like, 15 polys, at best.

[bevo]

In the models I have made using maya it is the conversion to a nif that adds all the polys. Not sure if it works the same for 3dsmax. My models start out neat and small and at least get doubled in conversion to a nif. Maybe you have some tips on the nif plugin settings. I myself can not find anything to change that.

[Tomato]

is it usually about doubled? If so it might be a simple answer... nifs read them in mesh mode (counting triangles) while most meshing programs default to poly mode (counting full polygons, which comprise about 2 triangles... sometimes more or less, depending on vertex count). That's just a "stabbing in the dark" answer though, if there's more to it feel free to PM some more info/images to me.