3D I – Crate Optimization

Urban Contemporary Crate – Optimized by Jonna Jarlson
The problems that this crate had was mainly that it still consisted of separate objects and that it wasn’t centered on the 0.0.0 coordinates.
This was rather easily fixed by Attaching the objects together, and simply specifying the coordinates of the object to 0.0.0.

While going through the xView filters Jonna also discovered a lot of overlapping surfaces. This was because the object is several forms combined into one, causing the inside faces of the boards to overlap with the “pillars” surfaces. This didn’t appear to be a problem however, as overlapping faces tend to become a problem first when it is two surfaces that are both facing the camera and occupy virtually the same space. This could cause texture clipping, as there could be confusion as to which texture would actually be shown.
This predicament could have been fixed by stitching the different parts of the object together, but as this would actually increase the combined geometry it was left as it was.

Four surfaces that could actually be fixed was the bottom of the “pillars”, as these would always face the bottom of the crate and never be visible to the camera. These faces was thus completely unnecessary and could be deleted.

The last thing she noticed was that there were a number of T-Vertices in the model. I am not entirely sure what this means, but I think it was explained as sharp angles that could be a problem animating since they could be misread by the engine. In something like a crate that doesn’t deform however it didn’t appear to be a very big problem. They could apparently be enhanced, I’m guessing by creating Tris instead of Quads?

Urban Contemporary Crate – Before and After

Sci-Fi Crate – Optimized by Ida Lahti
The thing with this crate is that it didn’t really appear to have very many problems. The only things that I think were done was to delete the surfaces of the handlebars that are attached to the crate itself and then to Attach the handlebars to the crate, as they were separate forms in this object as well.
This actually surprised me a bit, I thought this would be the one of the three crates to have the most problems. I guess perhaps I’m a bit too careful when creating objects, only using geometry that is already sound instead of trying to create something that can later be fixed. Not necessarily a bad thing, but perhaps a bit stifling to one’s workflow.

Sci-Fi Crate – Before and After

Medieval Crate – Optimized by Me
This crate however, did have some problems. I had left some stray vertices on the bottom side of the crate, making a few n-gons that had to be corrected. This by simply taking the odd vertex and target welding it to another vertex nearby. I can’t quite figure out how those vertices got there though, as I can’t recall working on the bottom part in any greater extent.

The problems n-gons can cause is quite a bit as I understand it, as some engines can’t really process models with n-gons at all, so fixing these are pretty high on the to-do list when optimizing.

But other than that, this was also rather clean.

Medieval Crate – Before and After (selection shows area effected by n-gons)

Here again I start questioning the shapes I use. It has stricken my on a couple of occasions that perhaps I am creating objects that are a bit simpler than I ought to. I am by no means particularly skilled in the art of 3D-modeling, but maybe I’m not really taking what I can do quite as far as I should. I tend to use extremely simple forms in creating objects, so being a bit more adventurous wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.