Military AI Works

Good Morning,

while working on some of the lower LODs of one of my models I thought about doing a cover for the plane and I will definietly need one for my Bücker. Now the cover would cover pats of the cowling, the windshield and parts of the fuselage.

I thought about doing this while keeping the polycount under control. One way could be to have a normal model and just have the cover painted onto the model texture. Then exchange the model with one that is painted normally without the cover, lets say when the nav lights go on.

The other way would be put an actual cover part on top of the model which disappears when the nav lights com up.

The first version would mean a lot of space on the texture file gone because we would need two full sized fuselage paints. The second would mean a considerable increase in polies (I estimate around 350-400).

Does anyone have a smarter idea?

Thanks

Andras

Andras,

How many polygons (mesh triangles) are there in the top LOD model and how many appearances of the aircraft do you intend to flight plan at one airfield? If both are not a huge amount, you might be able to afford 350-400 polygons. The problem is that the cover would be so distinctive, it would need to be carried through 4 or 5 LODs, otherwise the jump when it disappears at LOD distance would be too pronounced.

You might get a flicker of 3 seconds or so when the cover is triggered to "off" when the Nav light comes on, but I think that will be greater if you have to switch the whole fuselage to pick up the alternative texture.

My preference I think would be to make the covers as a part. It only needs to be single thickness, but just how much of an overhead is it really?

John

John, I noticed tat my models are getting heavier and hevaier the older I am getting. While my Pipers were under 2000 polies in the main model, the newer ones have around 2500, thus, with the cover around 3000. Of course, if you only put one plane with a cover on an airfield it does not make much of a deifference.

Andras

Is that 2500 square polygons, or 5000 mesh triangles Andras? I try not to exceed 8500 mesh triangles with anything up to 150 aircraft on the field. Either way you have bags of scope for the cover I would have thought. I'd go for the cover as a separate part.

Computing power has moved on while you and I are getting older of course.

John

Just a further thought Andras. You could produce 2 models, one with covers and one without. The mix can then be changed as desired in the aircraft.cfg file. That would also give some variety.

John