Tips & Tricks for 3D modeling

While Depence is a real-time 3D application it is essential to create and import 3D models, which are optimized for real-time rendering. Otherwise, a lot of performance will be used to just render the models instead of focusing on the main parts like lighting and physics simulation. For a better workflow, follow these guidelines:

• Polygon count

  • Always keeps your 3D-Models as clean as possible to reduce the number of polygons as much as possible. A bigger scene should never exceed 3-4mio polygons.

  • Make sure you remove unnecessary and nearly invisible parts like small holes, screws, etc.

  • Merge and optimize your models as much as possible.

• Normals

  • Make sure that surface normals and the winding order of all polygons are correct.

• UV Coordinates

  • If you want to apply textures in Depence later on, all UV coordinates must be correct. Therefore, it can be helpful to always attach a test texture on your meshes, to see if your current mapping is correct.

• Texture Dimensions

  • Always keep texture dimensions as low as necessary. Always note that a 4K texture resolution is not needed, as your viewport and camera projection will limit the final visible resolution. Always consider texture sizes of 1024x1024 or 2048x2048.

  • Use the power of two texture dimensions. Especially when enabling texture compression, these algorithms won't work correctly, if the texture dimensions are any different.