Help Lower Poly's

[tbudgett]

I created these retaining walls to hide the ugly slope you get when trying to place windows and doors on a basement. It has 15 choices of fences (MY POLY PRoBLEM), 12 wall textures, and 6 ground cover choices. They will work on slopes up to 2 walls.

http://thumbs2.modthesims2.com/img/7/4/3/4/5/MTS2_tbudgett_858947_ALL.jpg

http://thumbs2.modthesims2.com/img/7/4/3/4/5/MTS2_tbudgett_858948_RetainingWall3.gif

The problem of getting them uploaded is, per the moderator, the poly count is too high. The problem in doing that is this; Each straight wall gives you the choice of no fence, maxis wrought iron fence, chic fence or euro fence. the corner walls are double that. I've worked with the fences and, actually, my total poly count is lower than the 3 Maxis fences combined.

Please help as I think these objects would really be useful.

The Walls require Nightlife or Higher as I used a carpet as the base mesh. Sorry, but he in game thumbnails are as good as I could get them

Placement Instructions:
Placement, of all objects, will be on the flat spot at the top of the slope - not directly on the slope
1) If you have it on - Turn off the Moveobjects cheat (VERY IMPORTANT) - You can turn it back on after the walls and ground pieces have been placed.
2) Place Retaining Walls First
3) Place Ground Pieces
4) Place your decorative choices

Most Decorative objects and plants can be placed, on the ground piece, without using the "moveobject on" cheat.
Flowers, that need watering shouldn't be used, as they will die pretty quickly.
Bushes and trees seem to do fine.

Sorry, the pictures don't show that the walls will work on exterior turns also for those use the corner wall and corner ground piece, at the corner's.

Polygon Counts: UGH!!!!

The poly counts on the walls may seem high but each wall contains 3 Maxis fences, corners have 6.
Retaining Wall Stratight-3598/faces 5531/vertices
Retaining Wall Corner-7124/faces 7821/vertices
Ground Piece Straight-762/faces 1064/vertices
Ground Piece Corner-12/faces 24/vertices.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[bluetexasbonnie]

My suggestion -- forget about putting the fence on top. Seems to me, that the builder could put in the fence (ANY fence) if desired & then place your pieces. ... or did I misunderstand?

[GeneralOperationsDirector]

bluetexasbonnie, I believe that the fences would have to be placed **after** the retaining walls, and I suspect that the fences will be unplacable in that location.

tbudgett, try four different objects, one for each fence, and one without any fence.

[sweetswami77]

I agree with GOD. :rofl: I understand why you'd want to combine so many meshes, but 3600 faces/tile for something that requires several to be placed is going to be too much of a load for lots of people's systems. Is there some reason why you can't make them all separate meshes?

[leesester]

First - what a great idea! Do these objects need the fence polys? Can you make an invisible fence like Niols fence and also make it walk throughable via BHAVs? Can you still see the lower room with walls cutaway with these pieces in place? Is the wall paper "built in" - do we really need it - if you make a standard basement, replace basement wall with real walls, then there is already wallpaper, just the horrible gap - which these will hopefully fill. But mod is right - polys MUST reduce as this is per tile right?

[Echo]

How are you handling the selection of the different fence tops? Are they in separate GMDCs which are switched in and out? Or are you using transparent textures? The former shouldn't have anything like the same in-game poly problem, since only one set would show up at a time. The latter would have an in-game poly problem, as it would essentially be rendering all the fences all the time, but rendering some of them as see-through, which is much more intensive.

Do the walls have the placement tiles on the top, bottom, or both?

[tbudgett]

Transparent textures. Placement on top. Is there a tutorial on switching the GMDC's in and out?

Right now it looks like I'll have to go to separate meshes #&%$. Guess I was trying to shoot for too much functionality in one mesh.

[Echo]

If placement is on top, it should be okay to place regular fences along its edge, and not include them in the mesh at all. Have you tried?

[Numenor]

Echo, these are faux-walls, they are actually objects, and therefore they can't bear another object on top of them. Using multiple GMDC (better, multiple shapes and GMNDs pointing to the in-game fence meshes) would be the neatest solution, but it's not simple to do.

Tbbudgett, I have a simpler idea: you could split the fence from the retaining wall, and provide separate recolourable fences placeable using the very same tile where the "top" is placed. You already know how to set an object to be placed in an olready occupied tile without using the moveobjects cheat.
This way, the user will:
- place the retaining wall
- place the terrain tile
- optionally place one of the three fence over the terrain tile (rotating it so to make it appear directly above the wall).

If you modify the set as suggested, each "fence object" will have the same poly count as the Maxis fence. You could even set the object to read the mesh directly from the game files, instead of including it in the object itself; but we can discuss this later, if you are interested.

[tbudgett]

Numenor - I had thought of that early on but (duh!) decided against it. Now, it does, seem like the best solution. I should be able to combine the terrain tile and the wall, in this scheme. I would be appreciative of your help in getting the object to read from the game files. Thanks, everyone **I GOT A PLAN**:D

[Reyn]

What a nifty idea - I hope you can get this to work, because I do so much with basements.

[Numenor]

tbudgett, my solution requires aligning the mesh to the wall by rotating and translating it in the CRES. Have you ever done anything on the CRES? If you let me know your experience level, my instructions can be more accurate, while avoiding redundancy.

[tbudgett]

I do get confused converting Milkshape to the CRES but I figure it out. Basically, yes, I understand the CRES.

I was wondering, doesn't the fence have a BHAV that allows it to attach to a wall? If so could that be Modified to allow the fence to be added to my walls?

Thanks.

[Numenor]

Your walls are not really walls; therefore, you can't create an object that "snaps to the walls" like a painting. In any case, you can't just clone a fence: you have to clone a decorative object (placeable on the ground) and then replace its mesh with the fence mesh. For this reason, your question about the BHAVs possibly contained in the fence can't be answered; you can only rely on the BHAVs contained in the decorative object.

Regarding my earlier suggestion, on a second thought, I think that maybe the required job is not worth the result. After all, if the custom object contains the very same Maxis mesh, extracted from the fence, the game will have no problems dealing with it (and the moderators can't question about the poly count ;) ).
Therefore, I think it's easier for you to clone a decorative object and import the mesh extracted from the fences.
Better, you could create - if you agree - two separate objects for each fence: the rails and the post; this way, the user can create the fence exactly as he need it: with or without posts at each tile (and besides, if the fence has two posts, one on each side, placing two fences side by side will create an overlap in the posts, with a useless duplication of the vertices that the games must manage).

[tbudgett]

I agree with the logic - does seem like a kind of an in your face approach - but I see no other solution. Thanks for your help. Echo, leeseter, seetswami, GeneralOD, Reyn, and bluetexasbonnie your input and work is appreciated. tbudgett