No more Triangles?

[SidewinderX]

http://www.usc.edu/dept/engineering/news/2004_stories/2004_06_15_desbrun.html


what do you guys think?


(thanks [H]ardOCP for the news)

 

[OCybrManO]

It appears that this is just a method of converting 3D scanner input into an efficient polygonal mesh (ie: it gets an accurate shape without wasting a ton of polygons)... or did I miss the point of the article?

 

[Mechagodzilla]

I think that what it does is turn high-poly models into the best-possible low poly ones automatically. Correct?

 

[FictiousWill]

It sounds cool, but it still needs human tweaking. It's not like someone could stand on a platform, be scanned andthen apper in a game. It's a new way of cutting mesh polycounts down. Looks interesting, to be sure - but it's not revolutionary.

 

[The Dark Elf]

It sounds cool, but it still needs human tweaking. It's not like someone could stand on a platform, be scanned andthen apper in a game. It's a new way of cutting mesh polycounts down. Looks interesting, to be sure - but it's not revolutionary.

Agreed.

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[Wazz Pants]

heh whenever i read anything pertaining to computers at all i always think "how could this be used in a game?"

now in the article they say that it makes transformations immediately, so it could be used on a model that is in game to change the amounts of polys that it has immediately, correct?

If so this tool could be used to create an unparrelled LOD system in a game where every model scales its complexity baised off of the LOD specifications, models would probably have to be set up on the priority of what gets scaled by a human, but there would be no noticable transistions between LOD models as seen in many games today.

Modellers would no longer have poly limits on their models for ingame content and so could create high poly models, and it would adapt to how good one's computer was...

 

[Shinobi]

totally useless for games

first this quote says why it's useless for games and most consumer level graphics processing

The proxy representation, once refined, is then reconverted into a now-optimized mesh -- but not necessarily a mesh of triangles. The technique turns them instead into an assortment of polygons -- some triangles, but also four, five, six or more sided figures that more efficiently represent the shape.

graphics processeors can only handle triangles.

I'd say zbrush's LOD mesh system seems better for games,, but even then it's still a limited program..

 

[FictiousWill]

When they can reduce a billion-poly 3d laser scan of a random object into a 2500 poly mesh while retaining the important shape and do it without any human intervention - - that's a breakthrough. That would increase game dev time a hundred fold. People would start modeling by sculpting stuff out of dense foam and 3d scanning, then letting the computer optimize the mesh. That would be damn cool, actually.

 

[OCybrManO]

Yeah, then game developers would hire famous sculptors to do their models.

 

[Shinobi]

Oh I totally agree it's good for scanning models into games and film, I was merely pointing out that it isnt useful for things like game lod's and anything directly related to games

 

[FictiousWill]

No no , you were right. It isn't good for lod stuff. That's why it isn't much of a big point for game devs.