Theory Lesson A: "Nurbs? Sounds like..." or "Pythargoras forbidden!"

 

The first of thousands of very annoying theory lessons awaits you!

Well, what do I mean with "Theory"? In these lessons I'll talk a lot and you have to do nothing. It's like in school. I am the teacher and will tell you lots of things you might eventually want to know. Or things you never wanted to know. Your choice.

In this leson I want to describe how Rhino basically works and how we can get it to work together with TA:

 

1. NURBS

Sounds like....errrr well ummm... I'm sure you already thought what I wanted to say...

It is a shortage for ...well, basically it only means "geometrical 3d-object". Surely "Professional artists" (Or wannabes) can say that in a very complicated way to impress uninformed people standing close to them (They often try that on parties, but slowly they realize that normally all female persons leave the roomin haste after the first words...).

Well, Rhino uses NURBS objects for modelling. TA doesn't. TA uses and displays "polygons" or (more common) "faces". Well, I'm sure you're a bit confused right now, but let me tell the following: Rhino uses faces for rendering, too. Nurbs ae practically only a bunch of geometrical data used to describe the shape of the model. The shape is then reconstructed into thousands of small polygons, most often triangles. They then describe the shape.

Short: Nurbs is to plase your eyes while modelling. Faces are to display the model.

 

2. The Basic Rule of FACES

So, here we are. The way to show things are faces. Many faces that need calculations and display memory decrease the performance. Surely modern 3d-cards can display and calculate and move millions of faces, but unfortunately TA hasn't got 3d-support, so we need a rule so that people don't mess up the game with models out of one million faces.

So I guess someone tested all the things at the very beginning of the 3rd-party business, and one of the basic rules of modellling today is that an averagely sized unit (about merl/diplomat size) should not have more than 250 faces. That is very much when you see that the Cavedoggies only needed 50 or less for their models. Bigger unit can have more faces, but 250 should always be something like a critical limit.

 

3. Texturing ON faces?

Also, TA textures are applied to single faces. You might know the "Skin" way from other games, where yu can lay one bitmap all over the model like a skin. This won't work for TA. That's why you got to texture every little face. Now we need to think a bit: Bitmaps got 4 corners. JPEGs have got 4 corners...well, all pictures got 4 corners really. And that's why the comp is really confused when we use triangled faces. Yes, you CAN use triangles, but you shouldn't blame me when nothing shows up in the game! So hereby I declare: Use cubes to model, now and forever, and triangles might be comfortable, but they are really evil.

In the following lesson I'll describe how cool "the cubic method" to model is. This was the reason why. Good luck!

 

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