CGTalk - Doom3 Modeling

epiginosis

03-10-2005, 09:29 PM

Hello, I need to ask some questions about how Doom3 reads polygons and if my technique is going to cause problems or not. In the pict below I illustrated how I'm constructing the rib cage. Currently I'm welding a single layer of polygons to a hollow tubular shape with a front and back layer; The shapes that look like ribs. Is this going to be ok? I know in some renderers it works fine and others it doesn't.

The rib cage is being constucted this way so you can see inside the rib cage and through it. It also gives dimension to the ribs.

urgrund

03-11-2005, 12:33 AM

doom3 uses the .md5 format I believe, so you may want to look at how that handles strips... etc. Try www.doom3world.org - very good D3 forums.

Also, it looks like those ribs have a meshsmooth cage? Were you planning on using that in-game? If so, i'd recommend against it, more polies = more stress for the engine to trace stencil shadows. I'd make the ribs 8 sided and bake a normal-map. :)

epiginosis

03-12-2005, 11:20 PM

Hi, thanks for the reply. No, the quad 'patches' aren't going to be used ingame:) I just model that way in lightwave so I get a better sense of how the form of the normal map model will look when I subdivide the low poly model in ZBrush. It also helps me preserve the quads. ZBrush doesn't subdivide triangles too well.

Mrkat

03-14-2005, 03:16 PM

You'll need to 'close' the inside of the upper part so that it's not hollow (so you can't look up inside it too far). If you leave it like that as a single layer of polys that defines the *outside* shape of the object it will cause problems for the renderer when it tries to resolve that area onto the lowpoly mesh.

Related to this is the following, you can't use two sided materials in Doom 3 as they don't cast shadows (which you obviously want for a character model...). As urgund pointed out your best bet for more info is Doom3world.org forums.

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03-14-2005, 03:16 PM

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