5 million objects without PC slowdown?

[khetag]

Hi guys,
I'm newbie to Unity3D and this community.
I'd like to ask a question:
For instance, I have a 3ds max model with 5 millions textured primitive objects (cubes and spheres).
Is it possible to create Unity web application in which user will be able to zoom, rotate and select a particular object and all this stuff done without PC slowdown?

[Alvarus]

If it's all in one object that will exceed the maximum number of vertices (65K per object) by quite a lot. Even if it's all cubes you're 3ds model has 40,000,000 vertices.

[khetag]

[scarpelius]

I don't think you can find a piece of software able to render and manage 5 millions object in real time. And it is not only the render you have to worry, you will have to do sorting, searching, selecting and so on operations on those object and even databases require a certain amount of time to do such operations, so real time is a no go on 5 mil objects.

[Alvarus]

Well, cubes are a primitive you can add directly from Unity, too. In any case, when you're looking at a lot of objects you have to worry about the number of draw calls.

Each object you put on screen will have at least one draw call, and can have more if you're using multipass shaders. I don't know that there is a maximum number of drawcalls, but I'm sure 5,000,000 won't work.

Maybe if you broke it up to 600+ objects, keeping each sub-object under the 65K vertex limit...but I don't know.

I hate to be the guy to ask why do you need x when you're asking how do I do x, but...why do you need 5 million objects on the screen at once?

Also, maybe check out this thread:

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=153701&sid=bb8dcc903e9b05a64374a8ac695778ef

[khetag]

[Alvarus]

The number of triangles isn't as big of an issue as the number drawcalls. Though you would have to take care not to exceed the vertex limit. The huge spaceship is probably multiple large objects put together.

Here is a good explanation of draw calls:

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=32920&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=draw+call

As to how else to do it, you might consider having one model represent the building as a whole and then zooming in and focusing on a smaller area where you can work on parts of the model that display more reasonable numbers of objects.

Otherwise, even if you could have 5,000,000 objects, I don't see how you'd be able to navigate the scene and manipulate the objects.

[sybixsus2]

EDIT: Woah, the forum just did something funky. I quoted something from one guy and then ended up with a completely different quote when the person above me cross posted with me.

Anyway, he more or less covered what I was saying, so no need for me to repost it.

[khetag]

[Alvarus]

With 5,000,000 blocks there is bound to be repetition somewhere. So the questions is, how big of a pattern do you need?

A Rubik's cube has 6 colors. Which makes for easily distinguishable blocks. You could probably have 16 different colors and still be able to notice the difference between the blocks shown.

[khetag]

Ok, I found a real-world example:
http://blog.aaconsult.com.au/images/63.jpg

The blocks of the building are distinguished, I need to do something like this (and select a particular block), but I think I couldn't reach such effect with just texturing, especially when zoom -- the user will see that it is one whole object.

[Alvarus]

What I'm suggesting is that you use the textured model for the large, zoomed out version. And when you zoom in you can show some manageable number of separate objects with different colors or textures.

[khetag]

[WinningGuy]

Will the user actually be able to move the blocks that they click? Or is the block just going to display information?

If it just displays information, you could just use one big block and try to keep track where in space the mouse is when it's clicked.

[khetag]