Friday, March 18, 2011

Can I count on your low polygon-count?

If you can build it, I can (digitally) model it.  In the past I’ve built historic buildings, modern churches, kitchen appliances, curvy cabinets, even boats and people-body-parts.
Still, I should not be building objects for building suppliers to distribute to specifiers.

See pictures attached;
The sofa on the left will kill your model. Or, if not kill it – slow it down from manageable through annoying to. “delete those #@&%-sofas out of my model!” pace.
The one on the right will work well – even with multiple copies within the one file.

So, suppliers – be wary of the ‘size, polygon count and structure behind the model’ – trap;
You may have got a great Solidworks modeller to do all your door handles for the glossy brochures – or you may have a niece that produces excellent Max models of Italian furniture for real estate type of presentation movies – but rehashing these models for documenters can backfire majorly.
While almost any object can be enhanced by graphical and non-graphical metadata, if they are not built right first time it is hard to meaningfully improve them. And, the users you turn off with a bad library will be very hard to entice to try again in the future.

There are many good object developers that can assist, do your homework before you leap into digital product representation for BIM related uses!




1 comment:

  1. This is an issue that programs like 3D Studio Max solve by providing features such as Block Substitution which lets you swap different external files for specific objects in a scene or project.

    Other programs like AutoCAD Architecture, use Multi View Blocks, which are like regular blocks (or cells to use MicroStation termininology), but are actually a collection of different versions of blocks -- for example, simple 2D blocks for each of the main six primary orthogonal views, a low, medium and high detail 3D mesh view, different scale views showing from single, to double, to multiple layers of materials making up walls, etc. I think VectorWorks calls them hybrid blocks.

    Thanks for pointing out the importance of providing the correct level of detail based on the need or context.

    Warm regards from Los Angeles,

    Emmanuel

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