Modelling with planes?

[Romulator]

Basically, while strenuous in setting up and putting everything down, does modelling objects with planes impede performance noticeably?

I mean, let's say I model a whiteboard and some whiteboard markers, would having large amounts of planes (notably the markers, being circular) affect response rates or other matters which may cause inefficiency?

[PutraenusAlivius]

Yes, I think they do. Usually if it has a high polycount and the amount of it placed in the Editor is too much then the game could lag. But if it's quite low then there's nothing to worry about.

This is why you can't put a thousand monsters, but you can put a thousand boxes.

And planes? What the hell are them?

[The chaser]

Hmmm I'd reccomend the use of planes in the case of something low-poly and simple, but if it's something with details then go with a model editor.

Ex:

If you want to model a roof, then the best will be planes. If the roof is special in some way, then go to 3D models.

I don't know about performance though.

[Mudbill]

I don't think you'll need to worry about performace when using planes, because they are of the simplest geometry to render. They only consist of 2 triangles, whereas a monster like the Grunt may consist of 2,000 on its own.

The only reason it's not much used is because it's difficult to place a thousand planes in order to construct something. You'll probably be better off making model of it, but if you want to use planes, sure, go ahead.

[WALP]

No this should hurt performance pretty bad I think. Having structures made of planes means drawcalls for materials and other object rendering features for every single plane, as opposed to having it all in one mesh would only need to do drawcalls for materials and such once, and not have to check for every single face/triangle.
In other words having one object that is 10000 triangles is better than having 1000 objects that are 1 triangle each, and I am pretty sure we can consider a plane to be some kind of object here.

The only performance wise reason to seperate objects is culling. Basicly it means not rendering what is not visible, so if your entire level was one object you would always have to do passes for the entire level at least to some extend, so splitting it up between rooms allows you to skip rendering some stuff.


That said as long as you dont go crazy and make a grunt out of planes and such you should be fine.

-I did not bother to check for grammatics.

[Romulator]

Cheers guys. Was only planning to make smaller, objects if they were cylindrical, and larger objects would be fairly flat

[daortir]

TL;DR : Planes are great for modelling walls, ceilings, buildings and square-ish stuff and as long as you're not retarded and understand what they are made for.

Romulator planned to do simple stuff so the answer would probably be : no it won't cause any performance issue.

[Romulator]

Haha, well, assume that someone can't model, so they make something out of planes (possibly "solid" billboards too) which would generally be small. Sure I'd make a whiteboard and some whiteboard markers (like 2 or so markers) I would think that they would compensate for a small number of planes.

Either way, until I can learn how to model, I am making smaller things with planes :3

[Statyk]

I kinda hope HPL3 has a primitive brush system like UDK or Source. It's so handy being able to make a structure out of shapes and detailing with props. Just planes kinda hurts to work with. I doubt it though :I