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Poly counts

Discussion in 'Works In Progress - Archive' started by Brian-Sinasac, Nov 25, 2012.

  1. Brian-Sinasac

    Brian-Sinasac

    Joined:
    Sep 8, 2012
    Posts:
    97
    I don't understand why everyone builds models that are more appropriate for film than for video games.

    If you have a work in progress model poly counts (more importantly triangle/vert counts) should not be in the 10s of thousands range, especially if it's a character that you are going to use en mass (like a zombie). Poly counts should be low and details added with texture. Here is list of ploy counts for lots of different games for console and PC:

    http://www.rsart.co.uk/2007/08/27/yes-but-how-many-polygons/
     
  2. ShadyAlien

    ShadyAlien

    Joined:
    Aug 28, 2009
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    210
    It's probably for normal mapping. If you're making a character, you usually go really high and sculpt a bunch of details, bake a normal map from that, and then scale back the polys by retopologizing.
     
  3. Fab4

    Fab4

    Joined:
    Sep 30, 2012
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    114
    I don't get your point. Of course it is important not to use too much polygons, but if you take a look at the release dates of all listed games, there is no single one that is younger than 4 years and hardware is getting better and better (except of consoles)
    It is also very much depending of the kind of game you are creating. Take for example a look at dead or a live from 2001. One character has more polygons than some "newer" games. The reason is the amount of used meshes at the same time.
    Sometime you simply need more polygons to make it good looking under today's circumstances
     
  4. HolBol

    HolBol

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    This. It's for normal mapping and AO bakes.
     
  5. JamesArndt

    JamesArndt

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    Dec 1, 2009
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    Yeah normally the current workflow is to create (3) versions of a model. The high polygon count model (very high poly) as in millions or hundreds of thousands. This is for sculpting details to produce AO and normal maps. Usually these meshes are worked on in Zbrush or Mudbox. Your next mesh would be a cage mesh, or a retopologized mesh of your high poly model. You usually create this mesh as an "in between" to help capture more details in your normal map or AO map. Sometimes the transition from high poly to low poly is too intense, so you create this helper mesh in between to help smooth that transition. Finally you would have your low poly mesh, or the model that would be the one actually running in your game. You would apply all of your maps created from the high poly to this low poly model. Of course in today's standards, models are higher in poly count that years ago. However most of the time you want your game to run well on a wide variety of devices and computer specs. You always have to kind of work to that lowest denominator (unless you're omitting those users to begin with). Today we deal with mobile device specs, which are still low poly...we deal with web streaming games, which need to be lower poly as well. There are also a bunch of other factors, such as multiplayer, AI, the size of your worlds (environments) that impact the idea of overall poly count. Poly count won't be an idea you generate off of thinking in terms of a character alone, or a vehicle alone. You have to think in the global scale of your game to come up with a poly count that will work for your project.
     
  6. Brian-Sinasac

    Brian-Sinasac

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    Sep 8, 2012
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    More polys (in game) is not what makes things look good. It is normal mapping, proper use of textures and baked in ambient occlusion that makes things look good. Higher poly counts slow down your game, regardless of system specs...you might not notice or care about the slow down if the system you are building for is a high end gamer system...but then you are cutting out a large portion of the market. There has not been a new console in 4 years, mobile devices are skyrocketing, and dare I say make up a large part of the market that indie designers are aiming at. Lots of games are produced to be streamed, so pushing large amounts of poly data is just not acceptable.

    On mobile platforms not only do you want to consider poly count which should be around 1500 polys for a main character, but joint count is also important.

    I agree with several of the posted answers here, that you want to build big so that the appropriate textures/maps can be created...but the issue I'm seeing is that the characters offered on the unity asset store (in some cases) do not included the textures...just a big ass model.

    I've worked on several AAA games (as an animator, not a modeler) and I can assure you that the poly counts were never 50K+ for mobs.
     
  7. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

    Joined:
    Jan 5, 2010
    Posts:
    4,458
    I usually build my characters depending on what it is for... I am making a fighting game and my budget is around 25-45k of triangles, since this is a 1 on 1 game, and I also want room to create so I am not bogged down in technical aspects until I get to the optimisation stage. Most of the bodies without hair, gear, and such is around 25k...and these models are carefully built around articulation... and even the shaders I am using are quite insane, especially the ones I have for silk. In my game so far, the lightest character in my game is the warlock at 23k and the heaviest is at 42k.

    And also I don't have a lower end test system :( which kinda sucks.