Low Poly Buildings

KeirKieran

I've been looking at the models of low poly buildings and I have a question. Most of the ones I see are made like this one: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EVohCR7kPAM/Ut3RBl2eEpI/AAAAAAAADWw/_HHyCwuTATk/s1600/Low+Poly+House.jpg with the windows and doors built from the walls.

If the goal is to have the least amount of polygons possible, it would be more efficient to just make a window and stick it on a one polygon wall. By building from the wall itself, you get a ton more polys, so what's the benefit? I'm sure there's a good one (just about everyone does it), but I can't figure it out.

Moosebish

"The lowest polycount possible" isn't always the goal. It has to be a balance of polycount and texture fidelity.

In the one you linked, they can get high texture resolution on the door, potentially what the player will be staring at, rather than if they painted the door directly on the wall.

KeirKieran

No, I don't mean to paint the door on the wall, I mean to have the door be a separate object, instead of built from the wall. Such as:



The first building as the door and frame as a separate object from the house. The wall it's attached to is just a single polygon, so the house is only 88 tris. The second building is made with the door extruded from the wall, breaking that polygon up, so that house is 94 tris. Not a huge difference but over a lot of models for every door, window, etc, that adds up.

As just about game makes their models like the second building, I'm sure there's a good reason for it, but I can't figure it out.

Wendy de Boer

If you have a lot of overlapping geometry, that means you have a lot of texture space that goes wasted, because it's hidden behind other geometry. Overlapping geometry saves polygons, building things in saves texture space.

Also, if you build the doors and windows in, you can just make one of each on the texture and unwrap all the other ones to it. You can't do that if you make the whole wall a single polygon.

Machines these days can handle tons of polygons, but texture memory can still be problematic. So often it makes sense to save texture space over polygons.

KeirKieran

Thanks. That's a big help. I didn't know that textures were a higher priority, now. My game knowledge is a bit out of date.

I'll be sure to build like that from now on.