Well, at least I think it's an issue although I'm not sure.

I have an object that in Milkshape has 430 vertices before I save it over my MLOD. When I save it the plugin tells me I've got split vertices. Then when I check it with the ObjTool it has over 650 vertices. This is just a simple, small object and, to me anyway, 650 vertices seems really high for people to be putting in their game just to have it. 430 already seemed a little high but still within the realm of acceptable.

Anyway, I would like to fix this but I haven't any idea how. I tried the Direct-X thing on it and it gets a weird appearance that I think might be a normals problem but I haven't been able to fix that either. There are discussions that seem to be about this kind of issue here but they're sort of confusing.

I've had the vertices split thing before but it never made this much difference in the count. Is this really something I need to worry about or am I making too big a deal out of vertices count here? And if I should worry about it does anyone have suggestions about how to fix?

How is it UV Mapped? If it is mapped into many separate parts, the vertices are split along each UV map seam.
By combining parts of the UV map and welding those vertices on the model, you will reduce the extra vertices added.

Thank you for the help The thing is essentially three cylinders. I pulled two of them apart so that I could map top, bottom, and the sides all separately (since they need to be to shadow them right). Then I used MS's TCE to map them. So I guess you could say it is mapped in many separate parts.

The thing is, if I'm understanding rightly, I need to recombine these on the map in order to fix the problem. But if I do that then I can't have separate shadow areas on top, sides, and bottom. Is there another way?

Other than an overall poly count reduction, no.

I wouldn't worry about those vertex additions because they are necessary to your design. I don't know how small or large the thing is, but 650 isn't a really heavy count for something that has a finite footprint. Even with 18 slots and such, all filled with one of these, it is nothing to worry about.

And the raw vertex count is not the area to focus on, it is the face count that is most important. The vertices define the corners of faces, when rendered each face is what is painted on. While there is a file size difference and extra overhead for additional textures involved, the difference in the vertex count does not change the required rendering overhead nearly to the extent that adding 60% more faces would.

<* Wes *>

Ok...then I guess I shouldn't worry about the vertices so much. The faces are about the same though. Maybe I'll just make a different one that has less going on. Thank you again for help.

OM :p

You could try to use the clean tool.
Altho you prolly get the message 0 faces have been removed, it will delete all unecesarry vertices.

I also had similar issues with sphere's i reuvmapped and then duplicated.
Somehow things got screwed up bad and i wasn't be able to recolor those sphere's later on.....

If I understood this correctly, the worry was that when exported the object grew from 430 to 650 vertices. While there is a complicated technical reason, the gist is that the game engine needs to have one vertex for every UV point, but this is not true for MilkShape (or Maya or many other modeling programs). In the exporter plug-in, when it detects multiple UVs for a single vertex, it duplicates the vertex and assigns the separate UVs to the original and the copy.

I will use an example most familiar, that of how clothes are often UV mapped. The front of a blouse is one side, the rear another. If you picked a point along the edge of the front UV shell, there is a corresponding point location on the rear UV shell where they will touch on the rendered model. The modeler allows this point to be a single vertex, but the game expects to see two separate vertices at the same location, one for the front and one for the back.

The issue in particular here is really not the number of vertices, it is the number of UV points... the exporter just makes sure that the requirements of the game engine are satisfied. In this case, there was a particular texturing reason that the mesh was made with the UV map split into multiple parts. My opinion is that the attention to the extra vertex count is not significant here, as opposed to a case where the UV mapping was in a lot of pieces because someone didn't bother to merge the UV shells from separate cylinders or spheres because they didn't know or care.

You understood correctly that the worry was having too many vertices on the final in-game object. I kinda understood the reason why the vertex count grew from a similar discussion in another thread where you explained it but that conversation was about clothes. I couldn't understand what you were saying about ways of dealing with vertices in general or how to shrink the number of them in particular from that topic. Had you said I could fix this with welding I would have had to learn that since I've never done it...heh.

But now I'm confused again...I understand that the vertex count grows by necessity when an object goes from MS to the game. But if I can somehow shrink the number before the save step would that help at all? And would that help lower the face count? It seems like that's really my problem now since it's as high as the vertex count. If I used something like the direct-x and could figure out how to fix the normals problem that gives me would that do anything to lower the number of vertices and faces? Or should I just make the thing over and not have my cylinders be so round?

Base by Clean tool you mean the clean thing in MS right? I thought that didn't work to reduce the vertex splitting.

I don't know how much time you have invested in making it, and since you haven't shown it (I presume until it is done) I can't guess. You can fix the normals after using the DirectX tool by using Smooth All, but if you have hard edges (sharp instead of rounded) you will lose those unless you add smoothing groups.

Ultimately, making a new model using cylinders that have fewer sections may be easiest, since you have your original mesh that can remain in MilkShape until you have scaled everything to get a running start on the remake.

Well, I haven't shown it since the mesh itself is so simple that it's absolutely ridiculous that I'm having trouble managing it to be honest. The thing with it is that it's round and, for whatever reason, I always get these normals issues with round things especially if I try to lower the polys.

But I don't want to hand unsuspecting downloaders a small sort of decorative piece with 650 faces...that just seems too much for something they may place more than one or two instances of in a given house.

Rather than thrash around trying to learn the smoothing group thing I think you're right that making a new one that is less round would be easiest. I still haven't figured that out and it isn't well-described in MS's help topics. I appreciate your help

It does work but only if they are not used.


When making cilinders you have the option to choose its stacks and slices at the bottom of the model tab.
Experiment with it, its not that hard

Regroup its top and bottom once(then regroup all back)to fix the normal issues(autosmooth on)
When you have regrouped the top and bottom its wise to also reuvmap those at the same time.

Oops...I think I was not clear...sorry. When I said I haven't figured it out yet I was referring to the smoothing groups thing not making cyinders and choosing stacks and slices.

I am not understanding this part, "Regroup its top and bottom once(then regroup all back)to fix the normal issues(autosmooth on)
When you have regrouped the top and bottom its wise to also reuvmap those at the same time..." When I even look at the thing with autosmooth on I get a big issue with normals...it makes a sharp clear line between one part of my cylinder and the other.

OM, put the top and bottom in a seperate group, separate them from the tube. Now you can smooth both parts separate, re-UVmap and than regroup both groups to one again.

Thank you for the clarification Coco and I apologize Base...I didn't understand what you were saying at first. The thing is the top and bottom of the cylinder were grouped separately from the tube portion of it from the start...I had to do it that way to get them mapped for different shadows.

But after I use the Direct-X on the object I try smoothing and nothing happens. I've tried this many different ways and not just on this object but on many objects in the past. I get different results but none are ever desirable. I've just never been able to understand how the smoothing groups and smoothing function work.

Ah...i thought that was wat you wanted....
I tried to work with the smoothing groups myself but dont understand how it works....

The only advice i can give is to turn autosmooth off then and try to alligne the normals with Demon's tool.
You could try to reimport the higher polygon mesh back, put it on top of the groups list and copy its normals to the lower polygon mesh with Wes his normal merge tool.

Well, it is what I want...I just don't want it where it's ending up The line is showing as a sort of seam parallel to the long axis on the tube part of the cylinder. On one side the tube is more shadowed than on the other. That part should all have the same amount of shadowing.

The line between the top and the tube, and the line between the bottom and the tube are both getting sort of distorted...but that's where the sharp line should be. The Demon tool didn't help for some reason, although it has fixed things nicely in the past. I would try the other method you describe but I don't know where to get that tool.

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who's mystified by the smoothing groups...lol. I've tried this function and can't make it do anything useful either.

Anyway, thank you for your help.

Wes H his merge tools are part of his sims 2 unimesh plugin.
Made a small tut that explains a few things.
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=398865

Can you put up a screenshot, or the mesh itself maybe?

Thank you for information and tutorial I'm definitely planning on taking a look at this.

But for now, with this object's poly count, I'm gracefully conceding defeat. I've worked on it a long time...not the mesh actually, since this part took very little time...but the coding of the object. As it is, it's a simple deco object that people can do a lot with in the game. And at this point I'm ready to be done with it if you know what I mean. If that requires simplifying the mesh then that's what I want to do. It's not optimal but it's what I can do with the time I have available to me for making things and people who are downloading it won't much care about the difference anyhow most likely.

I think what I need to do is search out a tutorial on smoothing groups that I can understand if such a thing can be found.

I appreciate your help

Smoothing groups are for keeping hard edges. Not what you are describing.

A single visible seam is caused by two separate normals at the same spot that point in different directions. The align normals plugin or the Normal Data Merge plugin will allow you to make them both point the same, and the seam will disappear.

I useally alligne each part seperate by selecting its faces and use alligne normals(demon tool)
On the spots were i want the seam to dissapear i select the vertices and use alligne normals

Well, I had multiple issues with the object when I used the Direct-X. The seam was one problem. Base, I tried to use the align normals tool on it but it didn't seem to help. I'm sure I was doing something wrong although I tried it different ways that I thought had worked before.

Wes, where the top and side met it would get this undulating sort of appearance...as if all the triangles coming together in that area were slightly tilted in relation to one another. It was this second problem that I was hoping to use smoothing on...although perhaps this isn't exactly what smoothing is for either...I'm not sure. But I solved the issue the easy way...lol. I took your advice and just used a different object and now it's fine