Hearts of Oak: Conquest of the Seas is a non-commercial PC game being developed by PiratesAhoy!, and is to become the historical seafaring game to end them all! Fun, realistic gameplay on land and at sea, set during the Age of Sail, will provide extensive free play, exciting scripted storylines and intense multiplayer scenarios.
French Hebe-Class Frigate,38 guns, 1782-1821
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Those ships are sexy! I just wonder if, instead of modeling the windows poly by poly, it wouldn't be more efficient to use one polygon alpha masked with the window pattern and put it on both sides (or make a double sided material for it).
This has the advantage that the window is 1 poly instead of several, it is easy to unwrap (planar) and if you tilt windows, the alpha will follow and you need only make one window for all your needs.
Of course it would be a lot easier. You could make everything out of one poly... But that's definitely not our goal. Every model of our game will be very detailed. You shouldn't see any jagged edges or low res meshes. Probably for LOD3 or LOD4 you will have one poly for the windows.
You can use a one polygon plane for the whole size of the window and bake the highpoly down onto it; mask it with an Alpha. Saves you about 64 polygons/window and looks identical.
I know what you mean but no, it won't even look close to identical. When you're standing right in front of it you'd see a hugh difference...
So no, this isn't a option for LOD0.
There's no way to make a flat plane look like a detailed object, a normalmap doesn't work because when you look at the edges or with a slightly angle, you'll imediately notice that's flat.
And the polys won't be any problem. We are now in 2014 and not in 2000, so a few more polys don't change the game into a diashow... ;)