Polycount Limits

Zack Maxwell

The triangle limits presented by Valve are ridiculously low, and if I'm not mistaken most people seem to go well beyond them.
Are these just an out-dated guideline, to be taken more as a loose goal rather than a hard limit?

Zipfinator

They're hard limits enforced by the importer. Everyone follows them because they have to and I don't know any specific examples of workshoppers going past the limits themselves. I know there's a script you can modify to change the limits but for the most part everyone follows them.

Toasty

Personally I've never gone beyond the Limits set by valve, and I don't know of anyone who has. Yes they are quite low, but that's one of the prices to pay to allow the game to run smoothly on almost every PC system smoothly. I would imagine Valve if they notice you have increased the poly limit, would almost immediately reject the item.

Zack Maxwell

Hm... Maybe those people are just extremely clever about how they use the geometry and normal mapping.
I just know that, from my experience, I've had trouble even getting the basic shape how I'd like without going over, whereas I've seen others go through the trouble of giving rope, nicks, layers etc all their own geometry.

Zipfinator

Do you have any pictures of the geometry you've been having trouble with?

Zack Maxwell

Mine? No, I haven't been able to work on anything in months for certain reasons. This just came to mind because of the stuff I've been seeing on the workshop and in threads lately.
It just all seemed completely implausible based on the experience I've had.

Toasty

Perhaps you have some examples of items you have in mind. We may be able to help you break down how the artist was able to achieve their results.

Anuxinamoon

If you need any low poly meshes references, I'm totally able to upload some of my stuff to sketchfab or what have you, but I don't go crazy with my details so it might not be the exact case you are looking for.

Zack Maxwell

Oh, that would be really awesome to see. Thank you.

Tyn

You can also use the dota item viewer to check out any item ingame at the moment Helped me a bunch!

Anuxinamoon

Here is a couple you might find useful.
https://sketchfab.com/models/9fdcb9a27e954c9097b7e05191a5c287

https://sketchfab.com/models/c43b76a75fc242a78afa87227433c49f

remember, a vert is only good for two things, animation and contributing to the silhouette. Turn your model full black, if you spin around and a vert doesn't get seen on the edge or it doesn't contribute to the animation loops, bin it.

Zack Maxwell

Yeah, looking over those and back over my old stuff, I can see where I've made a lot of mistakes. Even stuff I've learned since that I simply forgot I'd done at the time; like fusing the entire mesh instead of separating the handle/hilt/blade of a weapon and just intersecting them.
Guess it's just been too long since I worked on that stuff, and I was much too new at the time.