Suggestion - Lower polygon options

[IceNine]

'Lo!

Great program! I've enjoyed using 3D Brush immensely so far.

I was wondering if it would be possible to add support for much lower polygon counts. I have old hardware, and usually work on models with fewer than 2K polygons. Though I can work with the minimum 300K polygons, it still slows down to 3-5 FPS on model rotation alot, and when 3d painting the cursor chops up alot. It doesn't miss brushstrokes mind you, but visually I kind of have to guide the stroke by guessing where the brush will appear next instead of being able to see it move.

I understand that some of the effects that make your program so great ( sculptural modeling stands out for me ) rely on high polygon counts to remain effective, and have no problem dealing with the slower performance when I'm sculpting. Using the "low shading" option fixes the FPS right up, but that still leaves me feeling that I could work on the model at significantly fewer polygons and suffer no loss when it's time to paint it. I can also work just fine on the low poly frame I imported without changes, but that leaves me wondering how much extra data my computer is spending its' time generating/updating and then NOT using for anything, which seems to defeat the purpose of building an efficient model to me. :-)

Would it be possible to remove the minimum polygon counts on the import dialog, or perhaps add the option for old hardware low polygon modelers like myself to specify a multiplier for the polygon count and give feedback as to exactly how many poly will be produced? Perhaps a 'poly budget' sort of thing.

EDIT - added a picture.

Thanks for your time making this excellent program, and reading my post. :-).

Edited November 4, 2007 by IceNine

[Andrew Shpagin]

What kind of hardware do you have? The most important thing is video card. Please tell me, may be I will upload some version of shaders with lower requiremens. (But it is not immediately because now I have seceral urgent issues to do - for example to upload the release 2.01 today )

The millions of polygons is only imaginary thing. The mesh that you see on screen is usually 30000-80000 polygons. All "millions" of polygons are "built-in" normalmap. So there is no difference int speed betweeen 300000 polygons or 100000 oilygons during the loading. But anyway you can specify the lower amount of polygons - just click on bar with number and set 0.1 for example.

But I have idea - I can reduce the poly count on screen adding the slider "Visible count of polygons" which is usually 40000. I think I will add it soon.

[IceNine]

Ah, I understand. The dense wireframe I see when editing is a derived surface, representing the normals of the normalmap. That makes sense, thanks!

Yes, an option to show a reduced density wireframe would be great, as well as ( just noticed this ) the option to cull backfaces in wireframe mode would also acheive the same thing by showing fewer poly simultaneously maybe?

For hardware ( I usually refer to it as oldware ), I'm using...

Win XP

AMD Athlon @ 1.6 Ghz

512Mb RAM ( <- 3DBrush complains about this :-) )

BFG nVidia GeForce FX 5700LE ( 256 Mb )

Thanks much!

[Ztreem]

But I have idea - I can reduce the poly count on screen adding the slider "Visible count of polygons" which is usually 40000. I think I will add it soon.

It would be nice if we can use this slider to make more visible polygons as well, this would be good for sculpting. Keep up the awesome work!