Polygon reduction

aerogator · Post by **aerogator** » 10 May 2007, 17:50

Hey guys, can someone please put me on the right path here. Below are two fuselages. The lower one is the basic LOD 1 P3 fuse and the upper one is my attempt to reduce polys by joining points. In reading the Aardvarks' description of this method they seem to be using something besides FSDS (Lightwave I think) because I cannot figure out any way to join polys other than joining their points. They say something about joining adjacent sides but I can't figure out how to do that. And the project statistics dialog box shows that these fuses have exactly the same number of polys.

If there is a method of joining polys in FSDS 3, I would sure like to know it. Help please.

Psuls · Post by **Psuls** » 10 May 2007, 19:07

If this method exists, than I sure want to know about it!

Lod making can be boring...

Dark Morelia · Post by **Dark Morelia** » 11 May 2007, 00:22

When you join points, the poly's still exist, you have to go into poly mode and cycle through them, deleting the invisible ones. They show up as just a line.

RipPipPip · Post by **RipPipPip** » 11 May 2007, 05:21

...so you may run that legendary FSDS "snap to scale" function.

aerogator · Post by **aerogator** » 11 May 2007, 12:38

Thanks Andy, that makes sense.

Rip, isn't it true that when you join 2 points there is only 1 point remaining?

RipPipPip · Post by **RipPipPip** » 11 May 2007, 12:46

You can not join them manually - the only way is to use "snap to scale". What you do is just make them "close enough", for example for 0.005.

aerogator · Post by **aerogator** » 11 May 2007, 13:30

You can not join them manually -

So when I select 2 points and press 'j', they are not joined as one?

RipPipPip · Post by **RipPipPip** » 11 May 2007, 14:16

Oh, that's interesting - it works! I never used that feature

If we are talking about LOD making that for complicated parts I just "wait" until have a LOD when change does not matter too much and then apply a new part completely don from scratch.

Here's an example of An-2 LODs philosophy:

Code: Select all

1 RWAI_An2_LOD_400	xxxx	--- (or formerly WHITE _400_BOX part)
2 RWAI_An2_LOD_150	xxxx	MAGENTA - lower poly tail + new engines (incl. formerly LOD_200 YELLOW - less poly wheels)
3 RWAI_An2_LOD_100	xxxx	L_BLUE	- new fuselage, new tail, new engines
4 RWAI_An2_LOD_075	xxxx	SILVER	- new fuse, engines, wing, horiz. tail, simpler wheels
5 RWAI_An2_LOD_035	xxxx	GREEN	- fuse very simple 4 sided, engines, vert tail (flaps,slats,gear doors removed)
6 RWAI_An2_LOD_015	xxxx	RED	- ultra simple 4 sided model
7 RWAI_An2_LOD_005	xxxx	---	- very ultra simple paper model