Max polys for characters

#1 Hi,

Is it a stadium, scene something huge?

Or a character?

If its a big scene and only one of it youll ever have onscreen yes it will work, might need to cut it into 2 meshes tho, as some exporters could have problem with 10k+ meshes.

If its a character or prop and you would be having multiple of them onscreen at once, I'd say crunch those polygons by half if possible.

#2 Yes it is a character model Thak.

So your saying the max character model for good performance would be about 8000 polys ?

#3 I dont know about 8k, i usually give a poly budget of 2-3k maximum for my players. Of course that also accounts for another 5k polys for the equipables. but for just the player and if thats full equiped with any weapons or mounted items. then i wouldnt push more then 10k for the character and his weapons on screen at any time. really if you have a decent artist you can do alot with that. 16k is a alot of stuff, when you consider the number of objects you can use those polys around your player.

consider this, write out a poly budget for your game. it might give you a perspective

scenery and flora (like trees) 50-500 polies
weapons and equips 250-1000
player 2000-3000
Single important objects, 2-5000 (be sure to use LOD)
multiple common objects 50-500 polies

when you consider you will have upwards of a hundred objects or more in a players view at any given time, it adds up fast. the question is does making the player lifelike fit your core model, if the rest of the environment looks like WoW? there is a reason why WoW or similiar game chose a certain type of art style, lowpoly is currtenly a option but it really depends on you the designer.

remember, textures can go along way to make a object looks realistic. Use them wisely.

#4 Thank you Edward very much for your thoughtfull answer. I will make up a poly budget.

#5 LOL I just searched google on this topic. I used the search words "poly budget game" (without the quotes).

Guess what?

This thread came up number 1. lol

#6 But you notice that alot of the artist and development guys talk about it, there is a few posts that talk about just, creating a reasonable limit for polys on the screen per object. Its just good policy particularly when you start getting into the math of whats on screen, number of textures vs video card memory.

#7 Another thing to keep in mind for artists new to this is that (in Max) and editable poly equals 2 editable faces
where editable mesh is 1 to 1 - I found this out the hard way on an early project delivering a lead character which I thought was 6k and it was actually12k - oops! and as Ed said remember weapons and equips add up fast.