Reducing number of polygons?

[BrandonD]

Optimize Modifer or MultiRes Modifier. Be sure to ReCollapse the stack after you use MultiRes because it stores several copies of your mesh in the modifier (taking up memory).

[Rhid1en]

Try applying an optimize modifier. Usually something I like to avoid, but it can be a quick fix and should at least drop it down enough that you can get back into your model and clean up anything that it changes you don't like. Best way of course is to just start welding verticies, cutting polies and collapsing edges. Hope this helps

[RatPoiZon]

thanks guys I'm gonna try this out, oh and colapsing vertices is NOT an option... its like the whole thing is just blue in the wireframe mode when I select vertices in the editable mesh...

[Rhid1en]

five thousand polys really isn't all that many, I'd be interested to see your model if you can do a screen capture or wireframe shot.:shrug:

[RatPoiZon]

sorry it looked like crap with and without the reduction... so I'm going to try a different approach... either with nurbs or splines,box modeling is just making the whole thing more complex, which I don't like... it creates loads of umperfect curves and surfaces that just aren't to my taste.

Anyway I am trying to model a McLaren F1, here's an image of it:

http://www.highresautoimages.com/mclaren/f17.jpg

What technique should I use to model it?.. .because I tried to model the whole body as a single object using box modeling... it turned out to look alright, but it took quite a while and it wasn't exactly perfect, and as you know now I am having loads of problems with it.

Now I am thinking of doing it in 2 different ways, either try and do it with nurbs, or try doing it with box modeling only this time model every piece of the body separately, like the front, back , side and all of that. Seeing as that I am new to NURBS and haven't really done anything with them the first approach will take some time, but I will definately learn how to make uncomplicated models look good...

Any advice on this?

[Rhid1en]

Personally, I hate nurbs in Max, but that's just my opinion. You could still poly model and break up the different pieces of the model, it doesn't have to be all one combined piece you realize? Or if I were creating this model, I'd do a combination of poly and patch modeling myself.

[NikLG]

I think that your best bet would be to model it with a spline cage, and use the surface tools to make it solid. If you model it like that you won't need to worry about de-rezing it, as you can simply adjust the number of itterations with the surface tools ( ie. with it set to 0-1 you'll get a lo-res version, and by bumping the number up you'll get a higher poly version ).
Using this method you can quite easily build the car in seperate bits, but make sure that where the spline edges meet they have the same number of points and the that they are the same shape otherwise you'll get nasty little gaps.
That's the way we built cars for the ToCA series of games ( well, the ones I worked on anyway, that being the first 2....not that I actually did any of the car modelling... )
It seems to work quite well.
Good luck...
Nik

[pete]

You could try the plugin "polychop".
It's pretty easy to use and it keeps youre texture mapping unlike the Max one "optimize"..

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