LAZY.

[aquilegia]

While trying to calm down from some mind-frying RL stuff, I did the relaxing exercise (HAAAAhahahaha) of looking at some high-poly hair meshes to find out just what made them need so very many polygons.



THIS. THIS IS WHY THEY'RE HIGH POLY. Some lame-o loserface needed SIX LAYERS of highly detailed polygon strips to make that stupid loop of hair. That loop of hair could have been made to look good with TWO LAYERS (inside and outside) cleverly curved to give the illusion of thickness. Or one solid shape! One layer! ONE!

Nevermind the ~perfectly curved~ hair elastic or six layers for freaking WISPIES.

THIS IS WHY I CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS. TOO MANY HAIR MESHERS ARE LAZY. LAZY LAZY LAZY PANTS. (Or maybe just stupid because, dude, it'd be EASIER to do it with fewer parts. WTF x infinity!)

Why yes, I do think I could do better, thankyouverymuch. It'd take time and a lot of swearing (especially because it'd be easier to make these from scratch than it would to fix the mesh), but I can actually visualize (and draw) what it would take to accomplish much the same effect without SO MANY GODSBEDAMNED LAYERS.

The hardest part would be getting the recolour package to work. :P

Comments

[hazardous_sims]

...I still don't get all the high-poly hairbands and clips and stuff. ALMOST NO SIMS HAIR LOOKS BETTER WITH HAIRCLIPS IN. 4SRS. I know nothing of meshing but I gather some of them are pretty complex and whyyyyyyyy??? [sigh] Well, at least we have people like you who know how to do it properly [grin]

[hazardous_sims]

(Oh, um, yeah. Hi, I have a shiny new sims journal and I added you because you're awesome. And you posted on my nanowrimo thread :-D)

[aelia]

Fuck it all, I wrote you a long comment, but then I firefox eated it ><

Er, anyway, yeah, it is much easier to start from scratch, particularly as, if you draw it out you can at least predict the amount of vertices you'll be needing. There's a pretty good tutorial for that on MTS lurking about too.

People can't even blame their high powered programs for it either -I use Maya, and it's just as easy (theoretically speaking, the actual meshing part is hard XD) to make a low poly mesh in it as it is milkshape. It just has a much better rotate tool XD If you don't know how to turn the default polygon settings for basic shapes down, you shouldn't be using it.

[azaya]

I think part of the problem is that a lot of hair meshers (primarily pay site owners) convert meshes from Poser to Sims 2, and since Poser is static, models can have a frillion polys and it doesn't matter. Of course, it's more of a problem in Sims 2, which is definitely not static.

Anyway, I'm sure you could do better. :D

[aquilegia]

I'm not against meshed-in clips and such--but only if they can be alpha edited out, AND aren't super-detailed 3D things that drive the polygon counts through the roof. There really isn't any reason for most meshed-in accessories to be more than a single plane of polygons with a nice texture on to create a 3D look.

[aquilegia]

Aww, thank you. n_n

[hazardous_sims]

Actually I was pretty exhausted when I wrote this comment and I'm not really so dead set against meshed-in accessories as apparently I was last night [laughs] But yeah, it's ludicrous when they're a million polys, and quite often *cough*peggy*cough* people only want them removed anyway, which is a MAJOR job if they're not done right.

[aquilegia]

Stupid browsers and their comment-eating ways! *shakes fist*

I think I saw that tutorial. :D That was back when I wasn't sure if I'd have to re-create the NL hair from scratch or if I could work with the existing mesh. It was pretty enlightening to see how helpful drawing things out beforehand could be. Not that I've ever been great at drawing hair XD but it'll come in very handy when I try my hand and recreating some billion poly mesh in a reasonable poly state.

[aquilegia]

I've heard about that! And the people who said they couldn't possibly be converted from Poser meshes because that would take too much time. Well, looking at them, I can't see how they would have made those hot messes from SCRATCH, especially not when they're so sloppy about fitting the meshes and bone assignments. There is absolutely no good reason that TS2 hair should have neck gaps or crunchy impaling hair now. *aggroface*

What really confuses me is Nouk. She was originally pretty good about poly counts, but her later meshes... O_o The sci-fi buns are a particularly egregious example--the fringe alone has this really detailed curve to it, but that's nothing compared to the buns or the main part of the hair, both of which have suuuper detailed curves, up to the grooves in the hair where it would naturally twist up... because that effect couldn't be done through texturing or anything. She left the scalp under it, too, even though the main mass of hair is a seperate group and would never be alpha edited out.

On the bright side, she put her hairs together in an otherwise semi-sensible way, unlike, say, the EA Store hairs. OMFG those are horrible.

At any rate, I'm going to take a whack at Nouk's hairs first because she has so many that I look at and go, "I'd like that so much if only it didn't have a huge polygon count/a bulbous head/more hair than your average anime character."

[aquilegia]

No worries! I figured exaggeration is par for the course when talking about sims stuff since it's inherently ridiculous. XD

... which is a MAJOR job if they're not done right.

I hear you there. >_<

(frozen)

[(Anonymous)]

Uh... so much things to complain about...
First, where's your mind? still using Windows 98? Why are you complaining about polys with the newest technologies? I have super-poly things on my computer, sims run fastly and the game never crashes, I'm those who prefer a great detailed mesh than a squared maxis one.
ah, just for if you don't know, PEGGY never uses poser, high-poly meshes doesn't mean that they're made with poser, she uses maya.
Ah! If you don't like the mesh/poly, just don't download it and stop complaining!

(frozen)

[aquilegia]

Blah, blah, blah, what a bore.

(frozen)

[(Anonymous)]

Fuck you, some of us run Sims on a 4 year old laptop because we're graduate students with no money for a better computer. It's great your mommy/daddy can give you things, when you get to be an adult you'll learn all money and resources can't go towards what you want.

With that said, a mesh can be detailed and not high-poly, and many creators should, oh, maybe realise that.

[(Anonymous)]

not my problem
but don't complain about others work, just don't download it.
peggy doesn't have an ad saying
"download my meshes or I'll kill you"

[aquilegia]

Wait wait what

Don't criticize other's work when it's shoddy, even when they're selling it? What kind of airy fairy spineless self esteeeem universe do you live in?

Grow a brain, kiddo, or you and your equally stupid fellow anonymice going to find yourself in comment moderation limbo on this journal until the heat death of the universe.

(frozen)

[aquilegia]

Word.

[(Anonymous)]

No, her meshes rather imply "I am a gigantic hack who makes complicated poorly-mapped crap and charges money for them. Please DL my stuff off of The Booty and fix it for others to enjoy."

[sakurajane]

they do.

[sakurajane]

I don't understand why you're doing this anon. I'll admit I hate when people are like "AUGH I HATE THIS MESH, BUT I'M USING IT ANYWAY"

I think it sounds so... immature.
But, I have the balls to say it. Let all know, Sakura hates people that bitch about situations they put themselves in WITHOUT trying to do anything about it, kthx.

But why are you Flaming Aquilegia for DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT?

A smaller file will make my game run faster. I'm mother fucking down. And my game runs fast. And I have a computer of FUCKING VISTA. It's ridiculous and runs as slow as god when it comes to opening programs. Srsly, All the power in the world, but it took him seven million decades days to make ppl?

Back on to topic, she's not just bitching, she's doing something about you. YOU are just bitching. And rather than even making yourself known for opposing, you're hiding behind Anon. You sir ma'am it are spineless.