Should I bevel the f*ck out of my hard surface model?

kuujo

I always tried hard to keep my poly count low, but seeing how recent games look like, I began to wonder if I should still bother with it.

Sharp edges don't look very realistic, and trying to fake small bevel with normal maps on a 90 degree angle between surfaces is pretty hard. Should I just bevel every possible edge at this point, since PC's are so powerful now?

I know that Mass Effect game hard surfaces didn't have any bevel at all, back then it still looked good.
World of Tanks game uses bevel only on the bigger, most noticable parts, there is a difference.
Looking at new PS4 games, it feels like they don't count poly's, they just use as much as needed.

Should I just go all out? From far away it is small difference, but if it doesn't make much strain on the computer, then why not put extra polygons so I can make some close ups in the scene.

aaronmwolford

I tend to bevel the larger focal points. At the end of the day I focus on making the piece look good. I wouldn't over do it though. 

Makkon

Are we talking about environments or props/characters? If it's environments, there's a plethora of ways to have nice beveled edges without a huge increase in polycount. One method is to have a modular texture with beveled edges on the normal map at exactly 45 degrees.
Sunset Overdrive used this method, their process can be found here: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022324/The-Ultimate-Trim-Texturing-Techniques

dzibarik

@makkon: is there any way to get a narrated version of this GDC talk? this could be extremely helpful.

kuujo

The Sunset Overdrive method looks good, but it seems to be purely for environments and my focus is on props (many different angles).

It's just this dilemma I face everytime I make something. For example: I have this space ship and I already made the most important parts beveled, and I see this engine exhaust and I think - well, it looks ok now, but for 50 more poly's it would look perfect.

I wonder if at this point, where PCs are so strong, I should just try and make things "perfect", since it doesn't seem like I have to hold back for "just good" anymore. You know, I see these guildlines like "each prop should be x poly's", but then I see article where it says that The Order characters have 100k each... it gets confusing.

I guess I should look more for how many polygons can there be displayed on a screen simultaneously, rather than how much per object.

commador

This would get figured out during production, and depends so much on the project. Someone along the line is going to say "heres the upper limit for x". Having said that, I would say tri budgets are just guidelines. If you can make something look significantly better with a reasonable addition of some extra geometry, go for it.

Obscura

@Makkon - This is almost the same thing, its just cut into the main geometry-->  http://polycount.com/discussion/154664/a-short-explanation-about-custom-vertex-normals-tutorial/p1

Makkon

@dzibarik I'm afraid it's behind a paywall, GDC does that sometimes.

@kuujo You'd be surprised, this method can be useful for props also. Just depends on the project and your needs.