OR & Polygon limits.

[Shortliner]

I know the original stock MSTS had a polygon limit, but I'm wondering if Open Rails have the same limit, or can it accept higher res. models?

[eric]

I've yet to find an upper a limit, and I have built several scenery objects well over 12,000 polys....

[superheatedsteam]

As a test, I created a loco with 330,000 triangles. OR loaded 2 of these locomotives at the head of a train and ran with no problems.

[pwillard]

I did not skimp on details for my recent Tank Car upload, I don't see why I need to adhere to MSTS limitations if ORTS isn't making me do so.

[jmicheel19]

Well, I know TSRE5 can get a bit glitchy with high quality textures, (example: 2048 textures) but I haven't heard of a railcar limit yet. It would appear that its kinda just based on what your computer can handle.

[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

Yeah - initially MSTS would start throwing artifacts on models around 10,000 or 11,000 polys. I never really noticed if BIN improved that - as I was an early adopter of ORTS.

Derek Millers steam locomotives exceed 70,000 or 80,000 without issue - with long trains - on detailed routes - with multiple locomotives.

Multiple 2048 textures on steam locomotives are now the norm for me - without issue - I use 1024 on freight cars.

As someone who's tested ORTS performance extensively - the biggest frame savers are using model LOD's (especially on freight cars) (yes you can make the transitions seamless) and minimizing Draw Calls. It's better to use a single larger texture in place of many smaller textures.

Regards,
Scott

[muskokaandtahoe]

Scott is right about the draw calls. At a minimum there is going to be one draw call for every texture file. A draw call is a hardware interrupt so by definition each one is going to slow things down. If your texture has an alpha that'll add another draw call. If you assign a material type (e.g., loshine) that'll add another. If you use a texture in multiple named parts add 1 for each part. In the later case things can really add up quickly.

Don't export more named parts then are required. That may mean keeping a "construction version" on hand and a simplified export version where the optional named parts have been exploded. You might be able reduce the draw call count by making a texture specific for the named parts from the several textures you thought you'd use. In this case because there is going to be a draw call for the named part the "extra" texture file goes for free.

You can check your draw call count in Shapeviewer. Go to the view hierarchy and count the yellow and brown boxes. The sum is your draw calls.

[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

Just to provide a piece I remembered - MSTS got around the 10,000 or 11,000 poly limit with the use of “sub-objects” - breaking the model down into manageable bites for MSTS. The exporter in 3DC handled this automatically for us while I think the others needed that PolyMaster program to do it.

Regards,
Scott


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[EldoradoRailroad]

not so fast......

As a matter of experience, the 3DC exporter breaks things down in sub, subobjects that are about 3000 polygons, BUT....be aware that the top most subonject in your hierarchy should have no more that 32000 polygons (for OR) and in my experience that should be less than 32000 per subobject.

Wayne Campbell's Blender exporter does not break things down into sub, subojects like 3DC. But the 32000 polygons per subobject limit is still there and his exporter automagically creates a NEW sub, subobject as needed with far fewer draw calls. If you are so inclined you can modify the Blender exporter python script so that the subobject creation "trip" points are different.

In english, I do not recall how many subobjects are permitted in OR per shape file, but doing simple arithmetic 10 subobjects X 32000 is a lot of polygons! By all means, create a test shape with many subobjects and 32000 per subobject. Enjoy OR crawling with your million(s) plus polygon shape file!

Steve

[pwillard]

Enjoy OR crawling with your million(s) plus polygon shape file!

Just adding here that there is no need to be snarky. OR is way better than MSTS about polycounts... let's celebrate that fact and not be ugly about it.

[scottb613]

Steve

Hi Steve,

Yeah - wish we had access to the 3DC exporter like they do with Blender. I had spoken with Paul Gausden a while back as I always thought he was the author of the exporter - alas he’s not.

The sub - sub - objects are killing me now - as they just force unnecessary draw calls. Honestly - it’s probably not that big a deal when it’s only the locomotive - just me being obsessive on best performance. Most models produced give very little consideration to performance.

Regards,
Scott


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[mstsbe]

Problem is, and I already pointed that out many times to the developers, we really need to move away from the MSTS-shape format towards something new. Away with the cursed sub-objects, in with a better new group/nested or parts-like structure.

http://www.elvastower.com/forums/index.php?/topic/27639-orts-new-shape-format/page__view__findpost__p__251152

But no dice after 3 years of asking to put this on the roadmap, it always get pushed away instead for implementing obscure cabview controls/dials, cant in curves, .. I don't see it happen anymore, unless some of the Czech/Russian forks of OR go their own way and become a seperate sim on themselves.

[EldoradoRailroad]

as before...

Hi Scott,

Alas, I wish you had the time and/or courage to use Blender. I do not want to be branded as an evangelist here with this. 3DC had its time, and as we both know the MSTS exporter was not Paul's. As we both know, Richard is MIA for any 3DC fixes/updates. Given how COVID times have taken so very much away from us all, maybe this fall is time for a model making renaissance through Blender. You will find Wayne's exporter quite useful and you have the source code to modify things to your own taste. On top of that, Wayne has been so very helpful with Blender "luddites" such as myself to support a version of Blender that most do not use!

In reference to a previous post on this subject, yeah, I have tried those HUGE models in OR, just to see if a million polygons was possible, well, it crawled in OR! Who said anything about using it in MSTS, of course not! Compiling HUGE models in 3DC brought the program to its knees and beyond. I really thought at the time that nobody would be foolish enough to repeat my "experiment".

Steve

[jefffarq]

Knowing I'm way benind the times in sticking with MSTS and TSM, I've been having thoughts about learning something new. Seeing Blender mentioned a lot, I thought I might give it a try. After watching 5 tutorials on YouTube about using Blender, it's obvious that the number of polys for Blender users is a non-issue. Having used TSM for years to make scenery objects and always keeping poly numbers in mind due to the limitations of MSTS, it's hard to get my head around Blender; not just for poly numbers but also for the complexity. I know poly numbers is not (so much) of a problem in Open Rails. But, I personally still prefer to work in MSTS although I realize ORTS works a lot better, all things considered. If I'm making something - a route, a scenery object, etc., I'd like for it to work with MSTS as well as ORTS.

I guess my question is, for those of you who have embraced Blender, if you still had to consider poly numbers, would you still have gone to the trouble of learning Blender? It seems like a VERY complex program to use, although I'll admit it does make some amazing products. It makes me think of Sketchup, which I tried for a while, which also has no regard for number of polys, but was very easy to use.

[superheatedsteam]

Hi Jeff,

I would be interested to know which tutorials you watched to give you the impression that poly use for Blender is a non issue.

You can create exactly the same low poly geometry in Blender that you can in TSM, gmax, 3D Canvas or 3D Studio Max and export .S files that work in MSTS.

Don't be overwhelmed by Blenders 'complexity'. Sure there a lots of menus and buttons but you only need to know a very small number of them in order to create objects for MSTS/OR. You already know how to create 3D models in TSM so you understand the use of primitives, faces, edges and vertices as well as the tools to modify the location, scale and rotation of those elements. The same tools and techniques are used in Blender though the location of those tools and user interface are different. When you are comfortable with the UI and basic tools the learning of the more 'advanced' tools will be easier.

The reason I recommend Blender to new 3D modellers over the TSM, gmax, 3DCanvas, and 3D Studio Max is the wealth of free tutorials for those who are new to 3D modelling. The hard part of making 3D content for MSTS/OR is not exporting the model to .S format, but learning how to create a 3D model in the first place.

In my case, I moved to Blender because it has a render engine which helps me make textures for my models. Blender did not make me a better modeller nor did it improve the geometry of my models in any way.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Marek.