From ernst@kwetal.ms.mff.cuni.cz Wed May 27 04:20:53 1998 Received: from burdell.cc.gatech.edu (root@burdell.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.3.207]) by lennon.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id EAA11717 for ; Wed, 27 May 1998 04:20:41 -0400 (EDT) Received: from wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (ijNyd55iOZBkUuJXpvYl1On5FzHkDbFg@[128.95.73.60]) by burdell.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id EAA14785 for ; Wed, 27 May 1998 04:20:39 -0400 (EDT) Received: from relay.accu.uu.nl (relay.cc.ruu.nl [131.211.16.32]) by wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (8.8.8/8.6.12) with ESMTP id BAA26703 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Wed, 27 May 1998 01:20:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from hydra.cc.ruu.nl (hydra.cc.ruu.nl [131.211.16.28]) by relay.accu.uu.nl (8.8.8/8.8.7) with ESMTP id KAA27654 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Wed, 27 May 1998 10:20:16 +0200 Received: from pop.cc.ruu.nl (hydra.cc.ruu.nl [131.211.16.28]) by hydra.cc.ruu.nl (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id KAA68206 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Wed, 27 May 1998 10:19:55 +0200 Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 10:19:55 +0200 Message-Id: <1.5.4.16.19970427101540.0d870fa6@pop.cc.ruu.nl> X-Sender: l9339493@pop.cc.ruu.nl X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.4 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu From: Ernst Kruijff Subject: RE: extremely hungry for polygons and texels Status: RO Hi there! >Making peace time: I think there's more consensus than contention here... Point taken.. >> I don't agree with either of you, I am afraid. I experience, >> and so do many >> other artists and architects, that simple primitives (low >> polygon count) and >> NO texels work very well in some design processes. > >I think we are more in agreement than in disgreement. Heeee :-) >I didn't say that artists START with high-res, or that >high-res is always the end product, or that textures >are always appropriate. Sorry if what I wrote left you with >that impression. Okay, then we do agree - also thanks to Chris for clarifying! I ahve spend quite some time to understand how people design.. which is very complex. That is why I jump in fast when someone claims something which is only partly applicable for designing. >What I AM asserting is that artists who create textures and models should >(and can) understand the limitations of the media they work with, >and that the good ones do. One of the hallmarks of a skilled artist is >that they can deliver a good model on a low polygon budget and can cover it >with a texture >with a low-pixel budget. Agree. > >> If you consider conceptual design tools (CDS, JDCAD and so >> on), users do not >> start with using highly detailed primitives and texels. If >> you consider the >> approximate modeling time with HMD based modeling tools - >> approximately 30 >> to 45 minutes - you don't have time for advanced editing. >> There is not even >> a high need to allow textures and advanced deformation of forms during >> conceptual modeling - non-realism is often needed. >> That is also why tools like Sketch use non-realistic >> rendering techniques. > > >A very powerful argument for the non-realistic rendering is that it is >useful when your work needs to communicate teh meta-point that "this is a >work in progress." Conceptual renditions in 2D or 3D should have the look of >a tentative design, not a finished product. Presentations that look "too >polished" do not encourage people to suggest changes or to give the kinds of >agressive feedback that "sketchier" presentations can give you, which is >often important in the design phase. Completely agree! This is what designers often refer to as 'approximity': designers get inspired by ambiguous representations.... >> Modeling for presentation purposes indeed requires a high >> amount of polygons >> and texels - in that case, you are right. > >To clarify my point: I believe that SOME but not all presentations need hi >pgon count. More often one needs high texture count, and sometimes, rarely, >you need both. Rather than focussing on polygons, I think we have to see >polygons for what they are: a means to an end. The end we seek is the >perception of high-detail ('high spatial frequency') and it is often >possible to get that fidelity from a skillfully rendered texture map, even >if it is wrapped around a very small number of polygons. Yep. Agree. >I am in complete agreement that there are places where you can't play >authoring tricks like this. Furthermore, there are incremental technologies >on our horizons for both texures and polygons that don't make us choose >these sorts of tradeoffs: authors create content at the highest level of >fidelity possible and the system degrades things as needed (progressive >meshes, wavelets, etc..) Say, were can I find more about progressive meshes and so on?? Architects would really benefit from viewing a design (at a certain moment) in a more approximate way. Sometimes, design solutions do not work out and an architect wants to return to an approximate level, for the same reason as the case of approximity I described above. In that case anti-progressive (sorry, don't know the right word..) meshes or wavelets (??) could work. Ok, that is it - I should keep it short :-) -Ernst .................. Ernst Kruijff ................. Westersingel 9 .............. 4101 ZG Culemborg ................ The Netherlands ................ (0)345 - 519397 .. e.p.c.kruijff@stud.let.ruu.nl .... ernst@kwetal.ms.mff.cuni.cz .. kwetal.ms.mff.cuni.cz/~ernst/