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some difficulties with this custom pickup mates, please help if you can:

the essence of the problem:
some of the polis appear as a curved surface (which is what i want) other polis appear as an angular surface (thats to be fixed)

i show you the max viewport first, read the notes, and ill show you how it looks in the game. orange "the dont" means "they dont"



now, i tried a lots of different weldings and braking vertex point, detaching and attaching polis, etc, none of them worked.

this is how it looks like if no points welded:



this is how it looks when all points welded:



i first thought it has something to do with vertex normals (which is true) and i checked if i modify the bands and make them concave, what happens. they are still displayed correctly, so thats not the problem. on this picture they are intentionally made bigger and concave, they still look smooth and curved:



on this picture you could mark vertex points and/or poligons which you think should be welded/broken/attached/detached/cooked/prayed for/etc:



i hope you know what the problem is because i spent way too much time with this little picture series above

direct links if needed:

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/1329 ... nycopy.jpg
http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/1039/maxpicture.jpg
http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/8410/m ... axcopy.jpg
http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/3370 ... nycopy.jpg
http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/4373 ... nycopy.jpg

i know exactly what the problem is but i dont know how to use max.

somewhere there will be an option in max to choose what angle makes a "sharp" line it should be a slider where you can choose where 0 degrees makes its all smooth all the way to 90 degrees which makes all polies have a sharp edge

somebody who knows max should know what i mean sorry if this didnt help

I can't help with max, but I'm aware of this problem in blender.

To me, it seems that on the 1st image, which was rendered in max, edges look smooth like you want, doesn't they?
But in the images rendered in the game, the same edges look sharp.

So I would think from that that it could be linked to the export process. Perhaps during export there is something like what MOH talked about (an angle setting to separate smotth/sharp).

Personally I never experienced any problem like that myself, when the whole object's vertexes has been welded together, the ENV always automatically applies to the whole object and not to each face (as you see on the first picture).

thanks guys,

moh,
i think you are talking about a certain rendering option in max (not sure where to set that though) but i think that has something to do with displaying/rendering options and not with the object itself.

jiggie,
yes, the max viewport render is smooth-ish...hold on, this makes me thinking of checking something in max....ill be back with this

urne
yes, the whole object is shiny, i managed that, the problem is that its not curved everywhere, but many polis make angular surface.

Try applying the 'shiny' smoothing group. Number 7 for -morph. Also, I see that you can greatly reduce the number of faces on the top and bottom of your model.

rhanks zach, it is shiny, thats not what the problem is.
i have found the solution, still dont know why is it happening though, im just recreating the angular poligons using the smooth ones from the red colored bands.
not sure about reducing the poli count, remember its vertex colored only, need them for the "texture". i have checked in the game, when a dynamite pick up popped up right in front of me, fps dropped only a few frames per second.

the only thing i can think of is that the dynamite sticky are cylinders originally (standard primitive object), the bands are plain planes attached together. this is the only difference i can see between the poligons.

okidok, here we go, nice and round dynamite sticks:

Too nice human, ENV seems to have an incredible effect making lowpoly things look round. I must try experiment further with 30 in my next projects.

Looks really nice. It is oginal idea and really under the track's subject...

zagames @ Jan 2 2010, 03:58 PM wrote: Also, I see that you can greatly reduce the number of faces on the top and bottom of your model.

zach, i think you are right, actually i have an idea:
if i delete e few of the sparkle poligons (they are a kind of prismatic shape three sided little sticks) and i leave only a simple plane from each of them (that is trisection) then when the dynamite is turning around in the game these planes are appearing and disappearing for a fracture of a second, giving the impression of sparkling. hmm? maybe its not that spectacular in the game as i described it but worth trying i think.

Try it out, I was actually talking about the ends of your dynamite. It looks like each stick could be transformed to 3 faces instead of what appears to be 5 faces. Not that it will help a whole lot.

actually each stick has 3 faces because the bundle is completely empty inside. you can see hexagons on the top but thats only a kind of division of the top poligon.

Yeah, I was speaking of the top and bottom of each stick. Don't worry about it though, everything seems to work fine.