CompuServe Messages

David, << Say what can you tell me about possible problems of reaching the dreaded 64K poly limit on a 3DS object. My guess is that the poly counts must be Very High with this type of model.>> yeah, the poly count DOES get high, but it all depends on what you're modelling. Don't let a high poly count scare you though, for ease of modelling and "getting what I want" out of metaballs-bones animation, I don't think theres anything better for 3DS. For example, my Face Hugger is at 55K for the body, and 5K for each finger, but it's gone down to about 20-30K now that I've started animating it. If you run into the face limit, I'd suggest building pieces of your characters one at a time, then smooth, optimize, and smooth again. Then boolean everything together and smooth out the joints. The reason I smooth again after I optimize, is because you often times get patches of really big polygons that stretch across the flat areas of your model, smoothing again just evens out the face sizes a little more, and prevents rigidness once you start using bones. But here's the good news – the 64K polygon limit is climbing into it's coffin – it'll be gone in R5. -Kyle