low poly question

[iamtravis316]

i have question about poly limits for low poly models.
what are the following general poly limits for next gen game engines like the unreal 3 engine

1. characters
2. large buildings
3. medium buildings
4. small buildings
5. various objects
6. a game level (without a character and cars)

because i cant really find any details on this

[Dr. D]

When i passed the Autodesk diploma, i lerned that character must be <5000 (but as i know now limit is 7500)
Vechicles < 5000 too
Buildings as i remember < 2000
game level don't have limit becouse level has dynamik loading.
when we searched limit for our game we put in scen 3 000 000 polygons and scen was working.

[SDA]

I agree here with Dr. D. I have no diploma but I can tell you that characters actually can't be built to look good unless they have more than 5k-6k of polys. Everything more than that goes into medium category

As for the buildings I have two friends that are studying architecture and they work in auto-cad and their poly count don't go over: 3000 for small building (0-1 flat), around 4500-5000 for medium building (2 flats) and more than 6000 for large buildings (with 4 or more flats)...

Various object have various number of polys (you will have to tell us witch those objects are lol)

And levels. They are as Dr. D. said loading dynamically. Your map should have at least 5mil polys if you want it to be small but realistic. Everything larger is more complex and it goes to medium poly count models.

I have an example to make on this subject. I play Wurm (wurmonline.com) and the game has really great map. The map is so large that you would need an whole day (or more, it depends from witch type of tile you are moving on) just to get from one corner of the map to the other. It has 4096x4096 tiles and that is 33554432 faces...

Cheers

[Dr. D]

I said about TRIANGLE polygon.

[iamtravis316]

Originally Posted by Dr. D

character must be <5000 (but as i know now limit is 7500)
Vechicles < 5000 too
Buildings as i remember < 2000

so these are tris not regualer 4 sided polys?

thank you both for the help yall answered my questions

[SDA]

You have to make a difference between poly and face. Face is surface made out of 3 dots. Polygon is however made out of 3 or more dots and bounded by edges. I am sure that this will help you. Wherever you see polygon count, it means face count. This is an error that needs to be fixed in some programs.

PS: Dr. D. I also meant those polygons since they are the ones that count...

Cheers

[iamtravis316]

ok i had another question.

for normal maps for low poly stuff, how should the mesh be
like say you were doing something that was just using a plane. could you do it with just a plane and have the detail of the normal map show up on it or would you need to have more subdivision on the plane (like cut the plane into a couple of different squares) to get the normal map to show the detail????

and should you chamfer the edges on stuff like cubes or will the normal map smooth the edge? or just not chamfer the edge?

[SDA]

Originally Posted by iamtravis316

ok i had another question.

for normal maps for low poly stuff, how should the mesh be
like say you were doing something that was just using a plane. could you do it with just a plane and have the detail of the normal map show up on it or would you need to have more subdivision on the plane (like cut the plane into a couple of different squares) to get the normal map to show the detail????

and should you chamfer the edges on stuff like cubes or will the normal map smooth the edge? or just not chamfer the edge?

Simple (or standard) plain is made of 2 faces. Your details (as you said) could be shown normally on a plane with 2 faces. But lets say you want a REAL bumpy dirt, this you couldn't just do with map and bump map. You will want to divide this plane and apply bump map to it. This way your 'map' doesn't need any bumps because it is already bumped. This requires more graphic memory and ram as well. And BTW no plane cutting is needed to show more details...

The choice is yours. lol. I haven't tried that before but some say that it is better that ordinary bump mapping. That last question, can you explain it a bit more, I dont understand it!?

Cheers

[ice_killer]

Vechicles < 5000 too lol Project Reality uses the BF2 engine, whe have that @ around 10.000 traingles for the Chinook ^^ but thats realy pussing the enigne :)

[iamtravis316]

another question? what would be the best tri limit for weapons? (guns)

[Dr. D]

< 1500 as i know.

[Izmal]

Originally Posted by iamtravis316

and should you chamfer the edges on stuff like cubes or will the normal map smooth the edge? or just not chamfer the edge?

actually,you can 'fake' a bit using normal map to make an edge smooth(depends on the situation).but to make it safe..chamfer it,adding a few poly/vert does make a different.