[beatspete]

I've been modeling aircraft a lot lately, but I wanted to get to grips with something dirtier, more industrial.

Went with a class 91 electric railway locomotive, they run on Britain's mainlines. click for pics
Modelled with nurbs in rhino:



I'd love to texture it up in Truespace, it was made with that in mind.  Problem is a model like this doesn't just lend itself to conversion to a modest polycount - has lots of circles etc.  In the shot below its about 44000 polys, and thats with a fairly conservative mesh.  Thank god i took off the suspension springs and replaced them with cylinders, they would have added 10000 easily.
Anyway, this is the best i got before truespace died.  Might need to loose 15k polys before i can do anything useful with it.... that or buy more ram.


Anyone got any tips how i could reduce it but still keep the detail?

[aldo_14]

Delete a bunch of the inner and under faces on the, um, 'undercarriage'.  If not already done, you could vastly reduce the polycount by changing the sides to use a custom map with opacity for the windows, and merging as many of those side faces into one as possible

i.e. if side is
---|---|---|---|
---|-O-|-O-|---|
---|---|---|---|

Where 'O' is a window & | is the edge of a face, then collapse to

|----------------|
|----------------|
|----------------|



(depnds on how made, of course.  This more suited to box modelling, i.e. how I make stuff)

[beatspete]

Originally posted by aldo_14
changing the sides to use a custom map with opacity for the windows

Hmm yeah I'd forgot about that.  If I merge the doors and body that should take out some, but I'd like to keep the windows seperate so they can have different reflective values from the body panels.

Well I know what i'm doing with my saturday night now.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by beatspete


Hmm yeah I'd forgot about that.  If I merge the doors and body that should take out some, but I'd like to keep the windows seperate so they can have different reflective values from the body panels.

Well I know what i'm doing with my saturday night now.

Can't you use a masked or reflectivity-map for that?

[beatspete]

Originally posted by aldo_14


Can't you use a masked or reflectivity-map for that?

Use a combination of the follow facts to derive an answer:
"I'm tooooooo stupid"
"I only have Truespace 3.2"



Still, that aside:



Thats 3000 ploys less, per side.  I merged the doors and body, which helped a lot.  Where there was previously a hole in the body its now solid, with that part of the texture transparent.  There's still stuff under it which shows through as 3d, but without the need for a high poly 'main body' panel. I used that for things like the handle bars either side of the doors, and the windows.

(the loco's name and registration is fictional, so don't bother trying to spot it down at King's Cross.)

[Corhellion]

King's Cross?

*wistles tune of Harry Potter*

...aaanyways....tis nice Pete!

[beatspete]

A little update....




Not much textured yet, I'm going for a 'dirty' effect so I'm learning a few new things... plus, Freelancer is distracting me.