How Low Poly is Rubbish?

Hi, having an issue with knowing how many poly make an at least OK item, such as a car, wheel, tree etc.

Currently I am finding it difficult to guess, as the fantasy nature pack which has loads of stuff is great, but, the tree's no matter how much I tweek the bark maps, just look like painted square posts. Or I can use downloaded trees at 300MB each. With afew of those I think my computer would crash from CGI overload

Iv'e seen awfully box like low poly cars as about 200poly, or probably some at about 50,000poly verts etc.
I'm just looking for trees and stuff that don't look rubbish, but but don't eat memory etc...

I have no idea what is ok. Is a 800 poly car too little? too much? I'm just looking NOT looking for Minecraft.
Any help or advice on finding the appropriate stuff appreciated. Currently having to Re-model .obj files of low poly cars with subdivision and subdivide in blender. Bikes too. and probably everything else forever.
Don't even know what sort of game i'd like to make as I don't want to take on too much of a mountain, because of the resources etc....

I don't know how much stuff/items can or should be used, and what size map, not to be too big or kill memory etc. What size map is appropriate for a normally functioning level, and how many items / poly's etc?
I don't see much of this info around.
Thanks for reading though.

 

I think you're worrying about it too much. Have you learned the skills needed to make things behave the way you want them to? Have you created a game that is fun to play (regardless of what it looks like)? If you've done all those things, then you should hire or join with an artist to polish and finish your game. If you haven't, then quit worrying about the cosmetics, and focus on building those skills!

 

I get your point, but in regards to trees, I thank the one persons video who showed the direct menu process, DanGry youtube etc. Now at least I can set the blender trees properly and manufacture a bunch of variations at low poly that look round.

Yes, I don't know how to do a lot of stuff yet. But I have no intention of joining up with an artist later either, as I don't have any links to anyone. I'm on my own etc. I couldn't afford anyone most likely either. But the artistic side is the seemingly hardest part for me, i think? maybe.

I hope, anyway. But I think that the dynamics etc of getting stuff to do what I want is much quicker to find out, as I have experienced so far. The major links of the finished actions etc will be the biggest problem, as well as cinematics / scenes etc. The rest is just simpler code, not advanced, I hope. God willing. Probably entirely wrong as most times

 

Vertex count is one factor among many when it comes to game performance. Focus on making your game look how you want it to look -- as you learn more you'll find ways to make your vision come true, even if that means getting a better computer down the road or learning how to write shaders or make your own models, whatever.

 

This may seem like an odd added question, but when I see most tutorials on programming, they nearly all use floats and int. Why is this done? As it seems that this is often a poor use of coding. Only because double is smaller than float and sbyte / byte is smaller than int etc, isn't it? Saving memory usage etc?

 

It depends on the look you want. But I would say if you want high detail closeups, lean heavily on LOD.

 

Somebody may have a better answer for you, but my assumption is that people generally need two kinds of numbers: natural numbers like the int, or fractional numbers like the floating point. They'd probably use floating point all the time, except that it is more efficient to use int for simple math, like incrementing a loop or indexing an array. Plus, floating point can give weird results at times due to rounding errors / imprecisions inherent to the technique.

 

Double isn't smaller than float.

Int is 4 bytes, byte is a byte. So at best you're saving 3 bytes of memory, which... well. And I think C# auto-casts to ints when you're doing math with them.

Unless you need to do some sort of very specific micro-optimisation, and even in that case I'm not sure, I don't think there's too much reason to use anything other than floats and ints.

 

For the simple fact that most tutorials are aimed at people who are just getting started so it would needlessly complicate the tutorial for no actual benefit. Saving a few bytes may have mattered in the old days of game development but it's almost always a waste of time now and may even have the opposite effect like @AcidArrow mentioned.

Plus prematurely optimizing is generally seen as a bad thing because game development is complex enough now that it's very difficult even for an experienced dev to know where their application is having the most performance problems.

 

Thanks for your replies, and yes i got float mixed up. But the use of smaller items (sbyte) seemed more appropriate for things such as mobile games and places that I probably will not use, such as facebook gameroom, have tight limitations. I think FBgameroom is 200MB in general max, with exceptions for 500MB. But thats size, not usage. Lots of phones/most, are not Iphone x or galaxy x etc. I mean i've got an old moto smart phone, but running games is basically too much for it. This will be the case for most people who get the smaller games like gem shooting games or simple battle games etc, especially since their phones etc are running AVG, Facebook, Updates and more.

But anyway, I don't know about auto C# casting into int. Haven't heard of that so i will stick with int / float.

Just got a DEBUG activation without necessary security from visual studio? Only just done a full reset. Computers are annoying

 

Again, using byte instead of int saves you 3 bytes. You would have to switch like a few million ints to bytes to save like 10mb of ram. (and what are you doing with millions of ints?).

And you could be losing performance. CPU word size is usually 4 bytes, so to get your byte, it will have to access an int size worth of ram and then find your byte from that, which is potentially slower than just grabbing an int.

 

I strongly disagree this will be the case for the simple fact that Unity's Mobile statistics page was reporting the opposite last year with approximately 41% of mobile devices having 1GB and 35.1% having 2GB. Less than 10% are on 512MB.

There are no sudden shifts in the numbers either when you slide the Wayback Machine back a year or two and in some cases (like with 1GB mobile devices) the percentages increase (45.2% versus 41%) compared to the more recent stats.

https://web.archive.org/web/20171101114542/https://hwstats.unity3d.com/mobile/

There are extreme budget phones on the market but the vast majority of them (based on my local availability at Dollar General, Family Dollar, and Food Lion) are not smart phones so they are completely irrelevant to game developers.

 

Ok, thanks all, just didn't want to practice any potentially bad habits early on. But with C# i have a daft basic problem, why when using visual studio does the text and number join? ("dividing" + num01 "by" + num02) etc. ends up like this: "dividing8 by2 equals4", but in Xamarin coding it just looks normally spaced.

Using the other option is not possible apparently because of particular function order etc E,G,
(dividing {0} by {1} equals {2})..... turns out fine, but for other maths (dividing {1} by {0} equals {2} or 3/4/5/6 etc...is out of order....

So how do I do simple maths that creates a space and doesn't join my letters? Why does it not work in visual studio? I would ask brackeys but account hasn't verified.

 

You get whatever spaces are actually there, in the quoted strings. Spaces outside the quoted string literals make no difference whatsoever.

This has nothing to do with what text/code editor you use.

I have no idea what you're trying to say here. You can indeed use string.Format, and specify the arguments in whatever order you like.

Again, I confess having no idea what you're talking about.

 

So are you saying I have to add a space at the end of each word, just to create space for the number, eg, "dividing " + num01. Will that separate the numbers; seems like an awkward method to add a space at the end every time. Is that standard practice for all strings with added numbers etc?

 

It shortened the space

 

If you want a space in your string you should add a space in your string. I don't know what's good about a language that somehow automatically adds spaces to its strings that no one asked for (or if even one exists).

 

I don't know, I was just doing a Brackeys C# tutorial and he was using Xamarin and it turned out different to Visual studio, maybe he just didn't mention the addition of these spaces, or had a setting turned on etc? I will just add them from now on though, thanks.

 

So I looked up who Brackeys is. Found a video. Saw this:
The spaces are there. So I don't know what you're saying.

 

And furthermore, it absolutely, positively, does not matter what editor you use to type your code. It's just a text file to the compiler. It does not know or care how you put text into that file.

 

Ok, thanks all. But just thought it was abnormal not to auto-add spaces in some way, as I would have progammed it more appropriately (if I knew how to program ). Such as: when do you not have a space after a word, that includes a number? after a comma maybe, but a word? I don't think I have ever done that unless it is part of a word in the first place (title etc as in Bond007). Should just have a button or auto-function to add text spaces to strings, then you would hardly ever add spaces, except for in between words inside the string itself. But nevermind, just going to add them, obviously someone didn't do it for a reason? Maybe a particular function or phrase. But Thanks for the help, will add spaces to strings from now on.

 

From a computer's perspective (and a programming language's perspective), a "space" is the same as any other character, so I don't why or how it could or should auto add them. Also I'm really not sure why this is so important to you, since this is a very minor part of programming. I blame Brackeys

 

I know this isn't about low poly in particular, but i don't really need a new thread for this, so, I added a box collider to arock which is quite square in shape,,,but,,, the collider is off in angle....it doesn't seem to rotate, and I saw in a tutorial that some colliders do not rotate...I can scale the box,,,, but am I just not able to fit a box collider on a brick shape rock because for some reason there is an inbuilt problem with unity transform rotation limitations?

Currently it was at about 30degree off angle. If I add another it will just pot3entially be "off" again,...... right, wrong?

I haven't figured out the search title for "reducing" mesh collider "points", or deleting them to create a less "high point" collider mesh. Any help with this also appreciated, title and rock, either are at least some help.....Thanks...

 

Post is a bit all over the place. (.. topic-wise)

 

You need to spend more time in the learn section.

Also, next time open a new thread.

As for the collider, either properly orient the model in 3d software, or make it a child gameObject to your collider parent and rotate it.

 

Nevermind, the items are from textures.com as free fully mapped rocks etc. I just thought it should have been fine without blender orientation changes to the .obj or other file etc. Annoyingly obviously not if your saying the orientation needs changing. I'll just leave it. I'm a bit tired of blender. Too many tools to learn, forever . I'll have another go after a few more tutorials like, finishing space shooter.

 

That's the wrong attitude if you want to be a one man indie dev thingamagig.

 

It seem's complicated at first, but keep working on learning one thing at a time. In just a few months you'll be pretty confident to complete most ordinary task -- and that's a lot better than being a noob who feels intimidated by standard 3d software and has to rely on asset store things.

It's worth the effort to learn how to do things yourself. Just take things one problem at a time.

 

You really need a new thread for this, so, I hope your next reply is "I made a new thread for this, <link to the thread>"

However, based on to the replies, and especially to your reply that you don't feel comfortable with Blender, i think you should give a try to ProBuilder:

It is now free to download from Asset Store, and will be part of Unity editor in near future.

It's really easy to do basic geometry (like collision mesh) with ProBuilder, and if you go deeper, you can do more complex models (and texturing). My opinion is; It's thousand times easier than Blender (it works inside Unity editor, and UI/UX for basic stuff is really easy).

 

I know it takes time, but blender just keeps getting bigger and more difficult. Not simpler. But hopefully this new 2.8 coming soon with EVEE new engine will make it easier for real time rendering.

 

I know, sorry, but it is just so cumbersome a program/engine. so many add-ons. And I didn't get any replies as far as I know to questions in the blender forum. Also, pro builder won't work for me, the menu in your image does not show that way for me (just text boxes show up). But if it is fully free with unity later when merged etc, I might try it again when it's updated. Currently I had an idea from another developer using spine. I may see if Inkscape will combine with it for vector images instead of just 3d environments alone...Think i'll focus on C# for a while though, as I keep forgetting it... Probably won't be on unity for a day or two etc..

 

Additionally you can export the geometry you create with ProBuilder (OBJ format), import it into another program to modify it further, and then import it back into Unity as an actual mesh.

There are alternatives to Blender and some of them are even free.

For me Wings 3D was the one that I found easiest to work with but it has been a number of years since I last tried it.

http://www.wings3d.com/

On the other hand @JoeStrout tends to recommend Cheetah3D. It is macOS only though and it is paid.

https://www.cheetah3d.com/

There's always the programs popular with the industry too. For me 3ds max was one of the easiest programs I've used.

https://www.autodesk.com/products/3ds-max/overview
https://www.autodesk.com/products/maya/overview
http://pixologic.com/features/

 

That seems useful for adding sub surface modifiers for sculpting normal maps, but it days a couple of days just to sculpt one brick in blender, because of the longwinded process of seam-cutting & map creation, then application to another brick as a map to keep the images & reducing poly count.

I can use blender to some ok extent, it's just mostly developed for CGI and not game design (speed building/mapping etc). I don't think pro-builder has a mapping function does it? Any other Item that is like a cave or flat without normal mapping requirements like stone rock floors/tiles and more...are not too difficult to build in either creator. It's the mapping that drives me a bit mad. Takes forever for one item/plant/wall/rock etc.

The most difficult part is sculpting to an image. Because if I dont try to copy, say, a porche, I can't use a porche image as a normal map, but also I can't use a porche because of copyright, so then it starts turning into a nightmare or design alteration for one-man-band. That's why I try to look for quite a lot of free stuff to modify, like turbo squid items etc.

I think my priority has to be limited to tutorials and C# for quite a while though. Just because of programming memory and use being poor.

 

My thoughts were primarily on optimizing the mesh to improve performance, advanced texturing with programs like Substance Painter, and so on. I've only dabbled with ProBuilder, and I do intend to change that now that it's becoming a major feature of Unity, so I don't know how easy it is to perform these tasks with it.

https://www.allegorithmic.com/products/substance-painter

 

Do you want to make games, or a long series of excuses? You can spend all your time searching for holy grail of modeling packages that will make things so easy your grandma could use it, but wouldn't you rather know how to use the most powerful, industry standard applications that have a long track record of support and continual upgrading?

If getting into blender is too much for you, just what part of game dev are you thinking is going to suit you? Basic block modeling is like, the foundation of games, and even if you only want to program it still pays to understand what a 3d model is.

But if coding is your thing -- and you are a beginner -- forget about modeling. That's only going to inhibit your programming learning. You can go a long ways using freebie place holders, and if you get pretty good at programming and have something to show, I'm sure you'll find plenty of equally skilled artist itching for a project to join in on.

And I don't know about blender, but typically with software things tend to get streamlined, while new features are added in. But the core functions you need for your basic modeling needs remain the same. You can safely ignore 90% of the features and as long as you can extrude, bevel, bridge, and tug some vertices around, you can make anything you could ever imagine.
I've been using Maya long enough that sometimes to speed up some parts of a model, I might do some research to find some workarounds using more advanced tools, but honestly I have never touched the boolean tool or MEL scripting. I do almost everything with a set of like five basic tools.

Same goes for Zbrush. There is 10,000 ways to do any task in Zbrush, and 90% of the time I do everything with the clay build up brush and move brush. Now, that sounds simple, and it is simple, but it still took probably 500 hours of working in the program before I could make complete assets on my own without having to look up every step of the process and ask a million pesky questions on forums.

 

What you are describing leads me to believe you have a fundamental lack of knowledge of how UV mapping and textures works. It's like you are putting your left shoe on your right foot, and cursing the thing for poor design.

No wonder you are frustrated! You really ought to slow down, and do some real training. Don't complete one tutorial and think you know how things work, complete ALL the tutorials you can find for a given subject, then when you can build a thing on your own without much difficulty, and it doesn't look like rubbish, then you will realize it's not so hard, it just takes time and dedication to learn properly.

 

This is a very good point to make. Very few people in this industry are truly jack of all trades. Most people choose an area to focus on (mine is programming) and find others to fill in the gaps they don't focus on. By specializing you can become very good at that one field but by choosing a jack of all trades approach you might be passable at every area but you won't likely be very good at them.

 

Well, to go further on that, I think a person can be good at several trades, but they don't learn them all at the same time. You start at one thing, reach a certain level of mastery, then begin another, so on and so forth. But, as anyone who has tried knows, making games is pretty complicated. It's a skilled trade, and you can't learn it in 6 months. Therefore, I just don't think it is advisable for anybody to try and learn to become a "game developer" right at the start. Instead, become a programmer, or a modeler, or an animator, etc. You have your whole life ahead of you to try all those different things. Learn with a sense of urgency, but don't rush through things and do a poor job of teaching yourself!

Just remember, if other people are doing something, chances are some of them are dumber than you. You're not going to let some braindead moron outdo you, are you?



One last additional piece of motivation:

This stone axe I am working on currently was constructed from a primitive shape in maya, took about 10 minutes to form, and then here in Zbrush I have shaped it entirely with two brushes. Now, that doesn't mean you are going to know how to do this without putting in some serious hours of training, but the point is, you can do a lot with very little. You don't have to be a total master of the 3d program, you just need to know how to use the very basic tools.

Also, it's a common misconception to think, "Oh, a rock, a brick, that's easy to make." In fact, the things that make them appear lifelike are very subtle, so don't beat yourself up over it. I think a more appropriate thing for a beginner to learn modeling from is man-made, hard surface things without a lot of curved surfaces. Like simple guns, tools, maybe a vehicle. Something that can easily be broken into a collection of cubes and cylinders.

 

I appreciate the replies, and the directional guidance. I think I just expect too high a quality result. I'm very picky . I don't like to accept anything that looks less than great, so what is ok for most is not ok for me.
I will probably have to buy the UBER shader later on, when i've decided on a design. Then again that will have to wait until iv'e figured out how to build the game/educational item etc in code, because it's a quiz/learning aid, hopefully. Maybe it will become something else i'm not sure. But still trying to think how to create an array with a question and if statements for it. With obviously some other scripts for variation of layout.

But it has to have about 1000+ questions, otherwise it's just not worth bothering with. So the quality has to be very high on the image and graphical art side, to make up for the lack of "game". Maybe with intermittent puzzles too.

The difficulty is knowing what to limit myself to. Never used Maya, and i'm a beginner and full-version-blender is free. But in blender it seems best to learn quite a few add-ons, because of the necessary functionality such as "import image as plane", make human characters, cookie flex rig characters, .obj modifications, sappling generator, brushes, animator for decent titles and cutscenes etc/ opening puzzle motions.

When I meant the normal mapping and seam cutting was mind numbingly slow, I was getting at the software being poorly designed for un-wrapping. In blender, if you have an item like a dog, you cut the legs off, then feet soles off, then cut the leg lengthways, for all four legs, then the head and body, "un-wrap" and have a mess of mesh pieces that you have to, guess, which is which, by cycling through selections (often the same shape/remembering this is exhausting unless I take ages writing notes etc). Poorly designed. It only takes a "number/highlight/shadow/overlay" of some sort, like placeing numbers on the mesh for seam-cutting, before UV un-wrap, then when un-wrapped you know exactly which part is which.

And that's only for a low poly four legged animal, imagine something "wibbly wobbly complex", he, it's barmy.
They should probably add this function into 2.8 but who's listening in blender forum? no-one is there it seems.

Yes a jack of all trades is not what I would like to be, but I think i'll have to do a few things at least, just to get a game completed.

The bare minimum of general skills seems to be C#, unity, normal map manual creation and unwrapping (3d), spine (2d), inkscape for vector images rotoscoping & for spine (2D & 2.5D), animation in blender & shaders also(oh, and the new EVEE real-time renderer), for nice looking icons/ buttons/ +more,that look real etc, at a minimum. Then probably if it's ok when it's newly updated with unity, pro-builder for most level/puzzle design.

If anyone doesn't bother with all this, could you let me know why? Are you mainly a programmer or graphical artist etc & not a solo-creator and don't need all this?

If you do create games solo, what have you limited yourself to if this is too much? Any help appreciated, thanks.

 

And young, too, I'm guessing.

Depending on the art style, you may not need these.

Not... really? I mean there are better UV tools out there, but blenders tools are by no means bad or badly designed. I think you're having a culture shock after getting your feet a bit wet and realising how much work it takes to create a game.

 

This stress inducing mountain of text is the perfect example for why you need to focus on a singular subject. You are trying to organize an experienced team's worth of task.

As far as UV layout goes, that is a big headache for beginners. I don't know what blenders situation is, but there are some good 3rd party tools like headus UVlayout which simplify the process a bit. But it really sounds like your main issues are with organization. You could have all the latest and greatest tools, but if you don't learn how to organize you are always going to be complaining about "poor design."

And just what good is complaining about poor design going to do for you? All of the games that have already been brought into existence were made with these tools, or much more rudimentary earlier versions.

The fact is, there has never been a better time to get into game development, as the tools we currrently have are more user friendly and powerful than ever before. If you are going to chalk up every difficulty to "poor design", you might as well just give up.

I'll say it again -- if you are having trouble keeping heads from tails when doing UV layout on a dog (assuming a single, watertight mesh), that is because 1. you haven't trained yourself properly, 2. you need more practice without the stress of wanting to complete an entire project looming over your head, and 3. you lack basic organizational skills, which is something you need to make a concentrated effort to develop.

What does all of that mean? Stop looking at others and blaming them, and start looking at yourself, attack your weaknesses like you are your own enemy, and make a decision to never make an excuse as to why you can't do something.

 

You just described like four or five entire professions.

You are never going to learn to be a modeler, texture artist, technical artist, animator, etc etc all at the same time. These are each entire professions. If you really have high standards, you are going to have to learn how to do one thing at a time.

 

I think in regards to a profession, yes they can be, but for a solo-creator, the requirements are less, due to the nature of the size and scope of game I could ever make in comparison to a team etc. I'm not making full cgi animated movies, so that skill is limited to using the most effective tools for it. Currently I'm not using a great computer with lots of power but if I decide I will be requiring it for greater animating levels for xbox kinnect facial mocap, then I'll learn that later, but not likely, so that skill is limited to what I will use it for etc...
Textures are required for all items, so I will probably eventually buy something like CrazyBump (others are glitchy when uninstalling/gimp/insane bump, awsome bump-dll file issues), to use in combination with all renderings etc of all items and characters. Bone rigging and character creation are requirements for any new original game, for doors / elevators etc, so the minimum and fastest/simplest area (makehuman/cookie flex rig etc) are also required but limited.

I'm not creating "snake" from metal gear solid or "Gears of War" etc. That level of skill, if it was required, would limit me to a 20 minute game because even if I was highly trained, it would take ages. Just the minimum of each is required as a bare requirement in my opinion to get a half decent solo game finished.

 

Generally, I was getting at the design of function of blender. It has an issue with add-ons. It is designed with hundreds of add-ons that you have to one, find and figure out from the preferences list, 2 figure out from a tutorial for each individual add-on what it is & how to use it, if a tutorial is around.

With sappling generator, the menu dissapears and is non-recoverable if you hit a key by accident, then you have to start again. Saving doesn't work, as the menu dissapears on re-loading. It is similar for other add-on menu's.

Generally, blender is one add-on added to many more. Created by users. So it's like having every tool from the asset store individually. Mostly without tutorials, unless they're in another language also.

If I had money to burn, obviously I wouldn't use blender. But I don't. I don't get these issues with visual studio, unity, irfanview, or many others. Yes tech has moved on, but people just don't bother to think simple, they think "what do I want" not "what would be useful for everyone".

But my point was about asking what other solo-creators find helpful to use and what not to use, what to limit themselves to. I don't know all the different software out there. Maybe 2.8 easy version renderer blender may be a great improvement, I will have to wait.

 

I will look up headus UV, but I didn't know why you said i'm trying to do a teams worth of task, i'm doing a game on my own, that's expected. Yes, it seems i'm whiny, but that's not the intent. My intent was to generally get across the point that some of the available software is not great, and would like advice on what to use that is not expensive or free etc, that is not just free & a monster of add-ons etc like blender.

Just a warning, over time, I probably will sound picky or whiny, because I don't like things I could have done better, when I can't program myself etc

Like blender. Obviously I couldn't come up with all of blender, but just by using it, i could probably think of 50 simplifications/improvements, that's why it irritates me. Though so does Microsoft Word It doesn't have an anti-creep function or booklet print for double sided after this many years. It's just lazyiness or greed etc. Hopefully you know what I mean.

 

When you start really getting into asset creation, you will inevitably start thinking things like, "Boy, it would be great if I had a tool to do such and such," and that is what all those add-on's are about. None of them are mandatory. What they usually do is reduce tedium, or sometimes they will open up entirely new possibilities.

It is clever, self sufficient people who make a tool they needed, and then, often times, let others have it for free.

And eventually, as you continue working and learning, you'll realize just how intelligent the design of so many of these programs and add-on's are, and how you're trouble with them was from a lack of understanding of how computers work and how 3d content is created.

But as long as you have an attitude of, "Blender is complicated, I have to find some other application to use," you are never going to get anywhere.