Once I had the Autiton model geometry simplified I then simplified all the surfaces on the Simplified Autiton model. I removed most of the texture maps, gradients, bumps and procedural surfaces from the model leaving only basic color surfaces.
The original high resolution Autiton Model.
I next set about sliming down the polygon count on the basic Autiton model because the Autiton would be instanced 1.5 million times so the fewer polygons the better. Because the camera would be moving quickly and each Autiton would be rather small I wouldn’t need nearly as much detail as the original Autiton model and could use a far simpler version so I loaded the original Autiton model into LightWave Modeler and started simplifying and optimizing the geometry. The primary method I used was to dissolve edge loops that had been used to add edge detail and smooth curvatures. I then deleted any stray points that were left and welded extra points to maintain all quads. I was able to bring the polygon count of the model from 22,322 down to 2,716 reducing it by almost 90%. That should do the trick.
I reduced the polygon count on the Autiton model by almost 90%
In the previous post I had the static, low res, Autiton stand-in instances working with the hex particle emitter. As well as the particle emitter recursively instanced to create 1.5 million Autiton units. So it was time to send them all for a nice little walk. I started with a previous walk cycle of an Autiton unit that I had created using IK Booster and Motion Mixer. This is the walk cycle that was used to make the Autiton instances walk in all the interior shots.
I then swapped the walk cycle Autiton for the stand-in as the reference object for the particle emitter’s DP_Instancer generator. This created six rows of 25 Autitons all walking away from the center for 150 Autitons per Instance Generator hex cluster. If you look at the next video closely (in full screen mode), you can see the particles moving along the ground below each walking Autiton instance. Continue reading
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I’m moving the scenes up to LightWave 11 and testing out the functionality of LW11’s instancing. In the opening shot where the camera zooms through the vast Instance Generator Lattice there will be rows of Autiton instances (1.5 million of … Continue reading