Optimusglen |
04-17-2018 05:47 AM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tippy
(Post 10004780)
Can I ask how big the file is now in data and what kind of hardware are you running to be able make such a monster assembly?
My laptop fully spec'd from HP can barely run fixtures I've put together and sometimes takes hours to convert files from customers.
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I have a bit of a hotrod laptop. What video card are you running and how much RAM?
After I create the models I export as step files. A step file is a universal true geometry format that can generally be opened by any model software, but it's a "dumb" model in that if I want to change a hole size from 10mm to 11mm for instance, I can't just click on that feature and change the value from 10 to 11 like I could in the native file. The bright side is that the step file is a bit more compressed than the native file, the engine/trans assembly is about 200mb.
When I import the step file into my rendering software, the import process converts the smooth round surfaces into triangles, this is called tesselation. I choose how much tesselation on import, the highest value of 1 breaks the surfaces into billions of triangles and thus extremely large files. For my latest image that one was brought in with a tesselation value of 0.15 and contains 30,500,000ish triangles with a file size of about 650mb which is manageable. Here's a shot of a valve cover showing the individual triangles.
http://c1.staticflickr.com/1/887/408...6644d024_b.jpg
The software does this because it needs to calculate exactly how much light is reflecting where to make true photo-realistic images. Higher tessellation values make for more accurate reflections because it's breaking the surfaces up into smaller facets and calculating each and every one for color and light.
I have some files that are multiple gb, but much of that is because I brought everything in with a much higher tessellation value earlier on in my history.
And applying labels and decals brings the file size up a lot too. This Martini 914 model with my engine model installed is 5.5 gigs. If I brought this up and updated the tessellation value I could likely bring this down quite a bit though.
http://c1.staticflickr.com/1/895/392...992bcb2c_b.jpg
http://c1.staticflickr.com/1/879/401...e5a93776_b.jpg
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