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Ancalagon44

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2010
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What?
He said using more polys requires the artist to do more work. I said that's not always true and gave reasons why.
I said if we can use more complex scenes geometry-wise, we will. We know we don't have to, that's very basic stuff which if we didn't know we wouldn't be qualified for a project like this. My point is we want to create as detailed of content for presentation of the device as we can, and the content creators share this view.

You're not getting it. He said:
The higher your polycount, the more work it will be for your artist.

Note that he does not mention hardware, he mentions polycount.

You responded with:
Not always. Hardware limitations for artists can mean both limiting their artistic freedom and doing less work. When they have less artistic freedom, they have to try to make something impressive with the limited resources they have which isn't less effort itself. In short he'd be glad.

Note that you mention hardware and not polycount.

You're actually talking past each other. You're not getting what he is saying.

Let me put it to you this way - get an A4 sheet of paper and a pencil. On one side, I want you to draw a bus, but you're allowed to use a maximum of 10 pencil strokes.

On the other side, you need to use at least 3000 pencil strokes and at most 4000 pencil strokes.

Which side will take you longer to draw?

That is what he is saying - requiring your artist to use more polygons will take up more of his time. Has nothing to do with hardware limitations.
 

froky

Member
Jul 19, 2015
59
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But there's 144 images per second, not 24 (2880 1 bit images packed into 144 24 bit images)
 

froky

Member
Jul 19, 2015
59
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You're actually talking past each other. You're not getting what he is saying.
I think the same about us actually. This is irrelevant to the thread, our modeller is as excited about making more impressive presentations for the device as the rest of the team. But just for the sake of discussion,

Let me put it to you this way - get an A4 sheet of paper and a pencil. On one side, I want you to draw a bus, but you're allowed to use a maximum of 10 pencil strokes.

On the other side, you need to use at least 3000 pencil strokes and at most 4000 pencil strokes.
I can explain with this analogy. You're not getting what I mean, or I'm not explaining it properly, in which case I apologize.
This analogy is pretty similar to our laser projection project where there were limited number of lines the laser mirrors could draw, about 1000.
Had we bought cheaper mirror motors, our artist would be limited to 300 points. If I said my 3d artist to make a bus with just 300, x length lines, it would be harder for him to make something good looking with such limited resources than if I gave him 1000 lines limit (less hardware limitation).
Sure, he could draw a shitty bus with most details missing with 300 lines, but nobody in the team would be happy with the results, including our modeller. It just wouldn't be worth the time and effort we had spent on everything else in that project.
But if he did mange to make a decent bus with just 300 lines, would he be doing less work? Well, again, the answer is not always yes. As one artist pointed out in this thread, sometimes they spend more time optimizing the 3d model (which means, among other things, decreasing the polygon count while trying to keep as much detail and quality as possible) which takes a lot of effort and time by itself. Often a higher resolution model is prepared, textures are created from it, then the textures are assigned to a separately prepared lower res model to make it look better. With less hardware constraints, the lower res model wouldn't need to be prepared, the original one could have been used, or at least much less optimization would be required. Or like in the analogy, the bus with less lines could actually take longer to draw because the artist would be thinking what details to include and omit and still make it look good. I thought 3DVagabond's example was enough, but there you go.
 
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Ancalagon44

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2010
3,274
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Yes, I know what you mean about limitations, but neither NTMBK nor me were talking about limitations. We're talking about instructions to draw in a higher polygon count or lower polygon count, ignoring the limitations.

As I said on the other page, just because you can use 10000000 polygons, doesn't mean you should.

Yes, I agree that there isn't always a linear relationship between polycount and workload, I just wanted you to understand what NTMBK was talking about - not limitations.
 

froky

Member
Jul 19, 2015
59
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Yes, I know what you mean about limitations, but neither NTMBK nor me were talking about limitations. We're talking about instructions to draw in a higher polygon count or lower polygon count, ignoring the limitations.
Well in this context we can't ignore limitations.

As for "just because you can use 10000000 polygons, doesn't mean you should", that's a different point I don't see raised anywhere and I don't think anyone disagrees there.

This is getting off-topic, I think we agree on everything and just misunderstood each other's points.
 
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sm625

Diamond Member
May 6, 2011
8,172
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The specialized projector will decompose the 24 bit frames it gets into 1 bit frames (so in total each second 24 * 120 frames).

This sounds like complete nonsense. How can you take 24 bit color and decompose it into anything meaningful? That 24bit number represents 3 separate analog values. A 1 bit frame would be completely useless.
 

froky

Member
Jul 19, 2015
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This sounds like complete nonsense. How can you take 24 bit color and decompose it into anything meaningful?
Please try to not to sound rude, thank you.
That's very much possible if you're the one generating the 24 bit frames in the first place, then it does not need to represent 3 separate 'analog' values, as I explained already.
 
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froky

Member
Jul 19, 2015
59
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I've been thinking about this some more as the project has been on hold, and was wondering how well the latest AMD APUs perform in the 3d area?
Maybe a smaller motherboard than a mini ITX could be used with just an APU, or just a miniITX with no dedicated GPU, that would help with the size...
 
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Blue_Max

Diamond Member
Jul 7, 2011
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Hold up! You mentioned OpenGL. I seem to recall that in the past AMD had nVidia beat when it came to OpenGL. Is this still the case?

Finding something to fit is one thing, but you also appear to have a huge performance requirement.

The GTX 970 has the advantage of being smaller, cooler and uses a much lower power supply, but small-sized AMD based cards exist too.

Add the words "ITX" to your video card searches and you'll yield better results. Newegg has a few. Some are a tiny bit larger and don't qualify as an "ITX video card" but are very close. Make sure you know exactly how much space you have, then plan accordingly. All the video card data sheets will tell you dimensions. Newegg has lots of pictures to help you visually determine size AND shows where those power plugs are (which will add length/height accordingly!)
 

Elixer

Lifer
May 7, 2002
10,371
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I've been thinking about this some more as the project has been on hold, and was wondering how well the latest AMD APUs perform in the 3d area?
Maybe a smaller motherboard than a mini ITX could be used with just an APU, or just a miniITX with no dedicated GPU, that would help with the size...

Don't think APUs have enough power to do what you want at this time...
 

Techhog

Platinum Member
Sep 11, 2013
2,834
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When will you need this by? The AMD Radeon R9 Nano will be the fastest option, but it'll be a month or two before you can get it.
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
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I would wait for Fury Nano and go from there since you'll have all the information necessary to decide. It's already almost end of August so it should launch shortly.

amd_radeon_r9_nano_real_unofficial_1.jpg


http://www.kitguru.net/components/g...adeon-r9-nano-to-partners-images-hit-the-web/