HODOR and Hod format: polycount limitations

Homeworld Remastered Collection Homeworld Mods and Modding
#1

I know for a fact, for having encountered it a number of times when I was modding HW2C and recently when making a hod for HWR via CFHodEd before the release of HODOR, that I couldn’t import single objects larger than about 80k polygons.

Now I don’t know if that was a limitaion of HW2C hod format, or a limitation of CFHodEd, so I decided to try making a hod via HODOR with a single object of about 280k polygons (if you’re gonna go big might as well shoot for the stars, eh?) and HODOR sat there for half an hour trying to process it, using one of my CPU cores on full, before I killed it.

Note that this is a per object limitation, and I’ve been able, by cutting hulls into several, smaller subobjects, to reach global polycount at the very least around 200k. This kind of warkaround is not necessarily a progress stopper (I’ve done it before) but is something I’d rather avoid if I can.

So I guess what I’m trying to know is, is there an hardcoded polycount limit in the hod format (even after the modifications made to HWR)? Is this a matter of HODOR choking on too large subobjects? What’s the actual figure for those limits? I’d love to have dev insight on this, maybe @BitVenom , since he’s been posting the HODOR stuff?

[MOD] REARM V2 WIP thread
#2

What kind of ship model do you need 200k+ polys for?? Even my lego ships cap out around 20k!

#3

The engine vertex buffers are ‘short’ format - aka you should top out at 32k verts (not tris!) for a single mesh, to be safe. Over time HODOR will get better at bitching when you feed it bad/unsuitable inputs. For now, if it crashes, what you did wasn’t good :wink:

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[MOD] REARM V2 WIP thread
#4

Thanks for the prompt reply, at least it helps knowing what’s the actual figure I’m supposed to watch out for.

That test case was a sobek-class battlestar from Diaspora. The other models I had to cut in several pieces before include this and this for HWBP, which should be around the 100k poly range, I don’t have the figures in front of me.

#5

Between asking my dear HODOR what’s wrong and it saing “nothing, I’m fine” when it clearly isn’t and bitching, I much prefer the bitching. It would make things much clearer.

Right now the HODOR’s communications skills are about the same as the one’s in the Game of Thrones.

#6

The mangled glowing white wing chunk at the front - it looks normal everywhere else (DAEnerys, Blender), so is it safe to presume that I managed to run over the post-2.0 poly/vertex limit?

Total:
Verts - 17,421
Tri’s - 31,542

Body mesh:
Verts - 12,126
Tri’s - 21,879

image
20161016012250_1.jpg1920×1080 160 KB

#7

Have you tried splitting it up once more?
(The mesh part that’s white)

#8

Yup, breaking it into a separate object fixed it. Phew. :smiley:

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#9

I’ll investigate when this happens exactly and add a warning/error in DAEnerys when I have time. :wink:

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#10

Ooh good idea, thanks!

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#11

Interesting that you are getting white polys, when using hodor directly I get missing tris that you see the background through, but there is no backfacing or infill. what options are you using in hodor?

BTW the smoothing groups on that ship look amazing

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#12

BTW the smoothing groups on that ship look amazing

Thanks! A lot of them are straightforward hard edges - I’ve found that the normal mapped edge bevels stand out more that way, oftentimes.

Interesting that you are getting white polys

It just finished jumping in. I find that watching the ship when it hypers is an easy way to find mesh issues. Anything that’s inverted or malformed tends to glow white during the jump sequence.

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#13

oh okay, I get the same effect

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