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Tri/vert count high and artifacts in Unreal Engine 4
http://www.volumesoffun.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=657		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  iUltimateLP [ Sun Oct 25, 2015 5:24 pm ]
Post subject:  Tri/vert count high and artifacts in Unreal Engine 4
Hey guys,
really glad that I am now part of this community.
I really like voxels and I'm planning to create a little game on it.
Now, I use Unreal Engine 4, and I have some trouble getting thing to look right.
My first question:
What kind of tri / vert count is alright for a voxel terrain? I currently use this one for testing: Image
I created it in MagicaVoxel (45x45x8) and if I export it straight out of MagicaVoxel with the .obj format and import it into Unreal, I have no artifacts, but the tri/vert count is really high (~14K/~21K). Is that normal?
My second question:
If I try lowering those counts by importing the .vox into VoxelShop and export it with the LowPoly exporter, I get those strange artifacts:
Image

I saw some twitter posts by VolumesOfFun (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CNSdVlXUkAAlch4.png:large) where I can't see those artifacts, so could anyone tell me facts about those two questions? Thank you :)
Author:  David Williams [ Mon Oct 26, 2015 8:30 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tri/vert count high and artifacts in Unreal Engine 4
So are you actually using PolyVox? If you have problems with MagicVoxel/VoxelShop then you should probably ask the authors of those packages directly. However:

iUltimateLP wrote:
What kind of tri / vert count is alright for a voxel terrain?


It varies a lot of course, but is generally quite high unless face-merging is applied.

iUltimateLP wrote:
...if I export it straight out of MagicaVoxel with the .obj format and import it into Unreal, I have no artifacts, but the tri/vert count is really high (~14K/~21K). Is that normal?


Probably, yes. Estimate how many 'surface' voxels you have, and you'll probably need several tris/verts for each if no face merging is done.

iUltimateLP wrote:
If I try lowering those counts by importing the .vox into VoxelShop and export it with the LowPoly exporter, I get those strange artifacts...


I've never used voxel shop so unfortunately I don't know much about how the LowPoly exporter works. Definitely ask the author about this.

iUltimateLP wrote:
I saw some twitter posts by VolumesOfFun (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CNSdVlXUkAAlch4.png:large) where I can't see those artifacts, so could anyone tell me facts about those two questions? Thank you :)


For out games we do not export objects as meshes and then load them into Unreal. Instead we use our PolyVox/Cubiquity libraries to load the voxel data directly, and convert it to meshes once in the engine. We do indeed to face merging to reduce the tri/vert count.

P.S. I also saw your tweet, hopefully the above answers it.
Author:  iUltimateLP [ Mon Oct 26, 2015 10:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tri/vert count high and artifacts in Unreal Engine 4
OK thanks! But is the UE4 Plugin working on the newest UE4 Version (4.9) because the latest activity on GitHub is some time ago now..
Author:  David Williams [ Tue Oct 27, 2015 9:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tri/vert count high and artifacts in Unreal Engine 4
iUltimateLP wrote:
OK thanks! But is the UE4 Plugin working on the newest UE4 Version (4.9) because the latest activity on GitHub is some time ago now..


I'm not sure - we used Cubiquity a couple of months ago for LudumDare but I do remember Matt had to do some tricks/hacks to get it working, so it might not work too easily. Also see our future plans here: http://www.volumesoffun.com/reflections ... h-forward/
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