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Dustin's Third Tutorial

From UamWiki

I think these might not work perfectly with the newer Pyprp versions, but they're here for posterity :P

Introduction

Quite often, you will make an object with lots of details, and then want to make a low polygon version, since it will run faster in the game(and also export faster).

Also, there is a limit on the complexity of a mesh. You should not use meshes with much more than 10,000 vertices or faces. You can create meshes larger than that, but you must cut them up, as described below. There are no side effects in Uru. It is actually quite common to do this.

You can find the number of vertices, edge, and faces of an object, by selecting the object, going into "Edit" mode, and looking in the(by default) top-right of Blender, where it says: "Ve:a-b|Ed:c-d|Fa:e-f".

  • a=number of selected vertices.
  • b=total number of vertices.
  • c=number of selected edges.
  • d=total number of edges.
  • e=number of selected faces.
  • f=total number of faces.

Reducing the number of polygons of an object

This will remove all vertex colors, and possibly texturing.

  1. Select the object in "object" mode.
  2. In a "buttons" view-window, click the "editing" button.
  3. Make sure that you are in "object" mode.
  4. In the "Mesh" section, there should be a section that says "decimator".
  5. Enter the number of polygons you want the object reduced to, in the "decimator" box.
  6. If you had painted the verices, it will ask you if it's okay to "remove uv-coordinates, vertex colours, deform weights, and edge data". You will have to say yes, and lose all that data.
  7. You should have a wireframe of the object; If it is how you want it, click Apply.
  8. You should now have an object with the number of triangles that you specified.


Cutting a mesh into smaller meshes

This will keep all vertex colors, and probably texturing.

  1. Select the object you want to cut up.
  2. Go into "editing" mode.
  3. Make sure that all points are purple(unselected), if some are yellow(selected), push "a" until they are purple.
  4. If it is a terrain, I recommend setting View->Top, and View->Orthogonal.
  5. Make sure that the "limit selection to visible" button on the "3d-view" window is turned off.(This is probably what you want.) Otherwise, you won't select any points that are hidden behind faces.
  6. Select the points you want to be put into the new mesh, using either box-select("b" key), circle-select("b" key twice), or perhaps another method.
  7. Go to Mesh->Vertices->Seperate.
  8. You should now have 2 meshes.
  9. Repeat these steps to cut off more pieces.

For the 250x250 meshes that you get if you use Terragen: I cut them into 3 vertical strips, using box-select. Then I cut each one of the strips into 3 squares(approximately). Works great! With this method, there is no limit to the size of meshes that we can effectively have!