Zmodeler 2 Side By Side Error
Henoch Holverson
In that particular context, you dont need a grid anymore. You already have the side of the truck modelled out. All you need to do is finish modelling the wheel arches, the panels, and aligning the vertices that need to be straightened out. Your initial 2D mesh is complete when you get to that point.
Making it 3D is a whole other process, and you will need to do a lot of trial and error and moving around with the camera to get it right. Fire engines like that rescue rig tend to be easier builds in my experience, due to them being flat. The best step is to model the cab first, and do the rear box body last, and make sure both are separately modelled, but attached together in the final product.
The general rule is that all verts must be connected to each other. In the one you've done so far, a lotta loose ends exist on the object so Id recommend building more polygons to fill the gaps in. See my tutorial for an example on how the verts are linked together. If you leave some unattached (or floating as I call it) they stick out and leave gaps in the model when it is extruded into 3D.
The main count for modelling is polygons. Verts matter as well but not as much as polycounts. For now, what you have is reasonable, for what it needs to be. From an unrelated separate tutorial, here is what a fully contigouous one looks like.
There is not really a "defined" limit for the game, it more is a compounding issue. If every vehicle on the map has 5,000 polygons and there are 10 vehicles that's 50,000 polygons rendered at that time. As such keeping the models as light as possible helps keep the performance load reduced greatly compared to building things that are really detailed but also very heavy. For un-common (unique) vehicles which will only have 1 or 2 instances called of them on the map you can have a higher limit, but for things which are quite often used in multiples (like police cars) keeping them light really matters. Remember everything is loaded on the map, from buildings, to scenery, to traffic, and your units themselves so keeping them light where possible is what matters. Most of mine average in around 5,000 polygons all-in (equipment on the thing, wheels etc) but if it can be done lighter it's all the better since it takes less resources to load a lighter model. Doing models with 15k+ polygons is generally a bad idea since when they're all in use it will cause a serious performance hit. The original vehicles were around 1200 polygons to 1500 polygons so in comparison 5k is a very large jump.
EM does not use a "draw distance" like many other games do (like gta) which lets them have much higher polygonal limits since they're only rendering a short distance away from you, not to mention you're also right up on top of the vehicle when playing that game. In EM4 since its a "bird's eye" game you're not on top of the vehicles and unfortunately it does not use draw distance so everything is rendered even if it isnt visible in your viewport. A poor design choice but it's how it was done, as such you don't want to make the mistake of trying to create things which are really over the top on detail and instead focus on making them look good while being as lightweight as possible. Due to how the game handles things performance takes a hit pretty fast if you overdo things. Be it lighting or models, anything rendered consumes resources so being as "tight" with the things you do as possible saves performance for actual gameplay and lowers the risk of people CTD'ing for lack of resources which thanks to this game's memory bleed is a real issue.
1). Press and hold CTRL and use the RMB to de-select things... If selection mode is on sometimes it interferes with actions so you may have to disable SEL mode to deselect some things. Annoying but a thing that does happen.
2).Not a very clear question but i'm guessing what you're saying is you built the part but it's faces are facing the opposite direction. In poly edit mode select the polys in question, make sure selected mode is on and use the Modify>Flip function. This will flip the faces to face the opposite direction. If you mean it's physically built in the wrong side/place, that is done by using the mirror function to invert the object (very similar to how you clone half and use mirror to flip it's component so it's facing the opposite way) Once it is mirrored it still has to have the flip function applied since it will appear inside-out.
Dont worry about it facing the wrong way (yet) since you opted to build it facing the opposite way isnt a big deal. Often times when I build things the pictures I use will face different ways so they end up the same way. What I do is build them as I started them, then once it is done I will typically go into the top-down view of the vehicle and simply rotate it 180 degrees on X and Y I think it is, you can do the same earlier but imo and my experience it isnt worth worrying about until it's done since you're literally only rotating it around in orientation instead of flipping or mirroring it, it won't hurt the vehicle any in doing it later. Orientation is something like scaling that you worry about at the end of the project, not so much at the beginning of it.
In Object mode (where it's one solid object) select the object you want to clone; CreateMirror on the front view of the vehicle on the X axis only (this will flip the model so that it is the opposite way, then use the modify>flip function to re-orient the polygon faces to face the proper way out. Align the two halves and merge them together using modify>Attach, attach the vertices of the two halves together.
As Itch described, but I see a problem already for you. Eventually you will have to "merge" the front to the side view, so it's vital that the vert/poly lines line-up, meaning the same nr on the side as on the front view.. Otherwise you have to "merge" them together and try to link them together which can get messy and make for a model that won't blend well when the normals calculate. it appears you have 4 or 5 faces on the side view of the cab (not counting the bumper) and 10 faces on the front view of the model, so obviously they won't link up cleanly so you want to ensure they have the same number of face sets (I use faces to symbolize a quadrant (2 polygons made into a square).
I'd go through and merge them so that you have the same number on the side to the front so they can easily be linked together when that time comes. Just a tip for future use; In the case of many trucks/engines the bumper "floats" and is not attached to the truck it's self. If that is the case do not model it as part of the cab model but create the space for it and float the bumper in place as a separate model piece. Both Itch and myself do this often times since most bumpers float to the chassis rails on the real things and it's more cost-effective to model the bumper separate with an indent on the cab where it would go. In this game because of how the view is nobody will notice that "gap" that is present where the two pieces are separate since it's not like GTA where you're up on top the vehicle. It makes life much easier modeling it since you can work the bumper as a sep part rather than having to try to figure out how to directly link it to the cab.
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