Game Quality - Car Detail

#1 I was under the impression that there is no limit to polygon count except for your computers limitation in rendering it. Meaning you have a bucket full of water. After you run out of water it gets choopy really quick. If your only model is this car then it should render it nicely!
Back in the day with TGE this is not any of the new stuff but perhaps it will give you an idea of what it used to be like.
What is the recommended polygon count for various objects within Torque?
Torque does not limit the polygon count of an object. This means you can have as high a polygon count as you want, as long as the target system can handle it.
The recommended maximum polygon counts for the highest level of detail are as follows:

Characters - 2250 polygons
Vehicles - 1500 polygons
Weapons - 500 polygons


For any other object in your scene (crates, barrels, rocks, etc.) you should not exceed 400. It is recommended that you aim as low as possible, since there is no reason that doo-dads should be polygon intensive.

How many polygons should collision geometry be?
Collision geometry should be anywhere between 10 to 30 polygons. The more polygons that you use in your collision geometry the more you will affect the performance of the engine (the engine has to check for collisions on every face at every frame). The best advice here is to remember that collision geometry is a best fit, not a perfect fit.

I have mounted an object onto my player, but the object orient direction is wrong, how can I control that?
Mounting orientation is handled by the artist via the orientation of the nodes themselves. They are not actually points, but "points with orientation", in that they contain both a 3D location and a 3D orientation. When you mount an object to a node, the code aligns the orientation of the two nodes (the mount node on the mounted object, and the mounting node on the mounting object).

#2 Hey Jesse,

Thanks for your reply. Deborah M replied to an e-mail i sent her and she said "...And our engines can support 10,000 polys per object. "

I hope this is not true because it turly dampers what i needed to do.

Thanks again for all the help. :)

#3 Most estimates I've seen put the character models in Crysis at about 10k polys, so Deb's estimate puts Torque right up there at the top end as far as engine tech goes. Consumer-level video cards - even hot-rod "gamer" cards - will run out of horsepower long before Torque does.

My guess is that your artist has a background in very detailed high-poly modeling for animation. Modeling for games is a very different animal. To put it bluntly, even 20k-60k polys for a single vehicle is absurdly high.

#4 As Sherman says, I think you've "got the wrong end of the stick" about games and poly counts. High def models, of the polycounts you are citing, are used to create normal maps for lower poly models, often utilizing software such as Nvidia's Melody.

For a nice visual demonstration; check midway down this guy's portfolio for the pic that says "Final - Normal Mapped - WireFrame". That super detailed looking model isn't super detailed, it's the wireframe model with a normal map on it.

Here's some "random statistics" gleaned from the interwebz

Gears of War, Xbox 360, 2006 (according to D’Artiste book)
Wretch - 10,000 polygons with diffuse, specular and normal maps
Boomer - 11,000 polygons with diffuse, specular and normal maps
Marcus - 15,000 polygons with diffuse, specular and normal maps

Halflife 2, PC, 2004
Alyx Vance - 8323 polygons
Barney - 5922 polygons
Combine Soldier - 4682 polygons
Buggy (without mounted gun) - 5824 polygons
Classic Headcrab - 1690 polygons
SMG - 2854 polygons (with arms)
Pistol - 2268 polygons (with arms)

Halo, Xbox, 2001
Masterchief - 2,000 polygons

Quake 4, PC, 2006
Player model - 2,500 polygons with multiple diffuse, specular and normal maps

Unreal Tournament 3, PC, 2007
Weapon models - 4,500 to 12,000 triangles for the first person view

#5 @Mr. Miller - The engine can support 10,000 poly's per mesh object. This is due to a memory limitation (hardware not software). However, this doesn't mean that you can't get a model over 10k into Torque. It just means that you have to break it up.

A simple example using a player model:

Body = 5,000 polys
Head = 8,000 polys
Total = 13,000 polys

However, as long as the body and head are two different mesh objects inside of Max, Maya, XSI etc when you export the engine will place will treat them as a single piece and you will have a 13,000 poly model in game.

If you look at the screenshots on the Houdini page you will see the dragon in several Torque screens. That dragon was originally created for a short movie and therefore is something like 50k polys as a single mesh. I simply went in there and broke the mesh into several pieces, no piece being more than 10k, and exported. I got a single DTS (Collada works like this as well) that loaded up into the engine just fine and was the original 50k poly dragon. Meaning I didn't reduce the number of polys I just broke the original character up into several pieces.

#6 Thank you for all of your support.

What we are looking to do is have the "garage" scene highly detailed models.

But the actual racing scenes are going to be low poly.

Thanks again for your help. :)