Properly Built Polygon Models

As I had written in the previous article about real time shadows, Descent 2's polygon models are flawed. Well, this is a euphemism. When I set out to rebuild the Descent 2 pyro, I found out how poorly built it actually was. There were unused vertices, overlapping faces, lots of areas were unnecessarily composed of many tiny triangles and rectangles instead of a single big one. It was awful. This made the original Pyro 284 polygons and 415 points big.

Here is an image where you can at least get an idea of what I am talking about when looking at the criss cross of lines from the model editor view:

Here is my custom Pyro, properly built for real time shadowing. It has only 135 polygons and 132 points:

Building it was a PITA though, mostly because of the flaws of Polytron, the model editor. Well, it says it's only a beta ...