MICROWAVE is out, anybody have experiences with it yet?

[J.Barr]

I'd love to get it, but i dont really have any commercial use for it yet (but it would be great in making my battlefield 1942 mod models!!! http://tlb.ausbattlefield.com ). does anybody have experience with it yet, maybe as beta users? I notice that it is credited as being used in UT2003 and an upcoming Serious Sam?
http://www.evs3d.com/mw_intro.html

looks pretty tasty!

JB

[jimnokc]

I have Microwave and have to say it's pretty impressive, and the price isn't too bad especially if you own one of their other products. However, this plug-in suffers from the same problem their other products do, skimpy documentation. This is a massive plug-in and is essentially a new camera type (or advanced surface baker). 14 pages of documentation can't do it justice.

I do have to say that all of Evasion's products are very stable and produce amazing results (especially X-Dof, it's one of those "add to every scene" plug-ins). Microwave has this same potential.

Hopefully someone out there will kick out a more extensive tutorial on Microwave.

[banshee]

jimnokc-

How It Works
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The work-flow in MicroWave is very simple, which can be demonstrated on the following example:

1. Create a tank object ~ 800,000 polys
2. Model and UV-Map a low-poly version ~ 1300 polys
3. Project via MicroWave (with radiosity and shadows ON)
(4.) You can play with the result real-time in the Modeler, (5.) check the texture's detail, (6.) compare with the original, or clone around some 50 times and use for a real-time simulation. Finally, this object is nothing more than 1300 textured polygons!

2. Model and UV-Map a low-poly version
Forgive my ignorance but am I to understand that once you have labored over modeling, mapping and texturing a model, that you have to go back and redo it again at a lower quality? For me atleast, if thats the case, the time I save rendering will have been consumed by re-modeling. Any insight?

[Rory_L]

It`s for game model textures.

R

[banshee]

Thanks, I understood that. I was just hopin' to get a little more of an idea of the workflow, whether you re-model from scratch or reduce the poly count of your existing model or a bit of both. I can see this being useful for background-scene stuff for animations so as not to kill render times and not just games. I probably should have elaborated on my inquiry a bit more.

[lt_ethe]

Yes, you have to remodel the low poly varient. Not really that much work at all compared to remapping the low poly UV coordinates to the high poly UV coordinates, which I hope and assume Microwave does.

[harhar]

polygon cruncher is the perfect companion to microwave.
In fact, they should bundle them and sell them together.

[jb_gfx]

QemLOSS 3 is excellent too for polygons reduction and it can preserves all v-maps. Plus it's giftware.