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xDash
08-26-2011, 03:27 PM
I'm trying to work on a Minecraft project, so everything is made from pixels and cubes.
I have a lot of blocks made, such as grass, dirt and stone. The only problem is that they all take up 16x16 polygons per side. That's 256 polygons per side, 1536 polygons per block!
I can't simply reduce the polygon count, as all the polygons are textured to match the exact block from Minecraft, so reducing them will destroy any likeness to the actual thing. I need to have about 1000 of these blocks in a scene. I currently have around 150-200 in a scene, maybe a few more and it is taking up extortionate amounts of RAM.

Is there any way to keep the textures on the sides of the blocks but reduce the polygon count to 1 per side?
Sebastianf
08-29-2011, 03:40 AM
Not sure if this will work it depends on how its all setup up. Assuming you have the UVS for each side of the cube filling the space of the UV editor or that they all share the save UVs. Select a bunch of objects open the UV texture editor yand marque select all the edges in the middle that you dont want. I tried this in a test scene and it didnt like it when I did delete edge/vertex.. but worked with just regular delete this will mean doing the same step again with vertices as it will leave vertices along the edges. I recommend saving before you do this as it may be prone to crashing and may need to do it in sections. And ofcourse delete history afterrwards.
InfernalDarkness
08-29-2011, 06:42 AM
Use instancing or proxies. You have 1,000 objects, correct? But only a few (five or ten perhaps) different objects? I've never played Minecraft, so I don't know precisely what you're talking about. But to defeat RAM usage, instead of duplicating your objects, instance them.

This means it takes no more RAM to render 1,000,000,000 objects than it does to render 1. It will simply take longer to trace it, resulting in a slower (longer) render time. But the RAM usage will remain the same, minus FG and other caches and tracing. This is how one is able to render billions of polygons worth of forests and plants, for example, without RAM usage crashing the machine. And most plants and trees have at least half a million polys.

Hope this helps, if you need more info just say the word.
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