Low poly guidelines?

hexflow

So when it comes time to take a high poly sculpt and convert it to lower poly asset, is decimation the preferred method if you are not going to animate? Or is it still best practice to retopo with quads?

When creating a new retopo with say 3D-Coat is there a standard guideline to know just how low poly to make that mesh? say the high poly is 2.4mil, is the goal say 10K or a %?

I am sure that where the asset ends up dictates some of the answers (game engine versus stills versus animation etc.) Just trying to determine a good foundation to build upon for creating low poly assets.

Always learning, thanks.

lukors

You'll probably want to bake data from the high poly to the low poly, which means that you want clean topology on the low poly that bakes well, which means you'll want to retopo by hand. This depends on what you're doing however, if you can get clean enough topology form decimation, then do that. You just have to be aware of what type of topology you need, how you then achieve that topology is not important.

AdvisableRobin

It depends on what your target platform is, but on current gen hardware(PC/Xbox/PS4) there isn't really a polycount or guideline to follow. You really just use however much is needed to make it look good depending on the distance that it'll be seen from.

Look up art dumps, sometimes they show wires, polycounts or other technical snippets about the project.

Count Vertsalot

You make the poly count as low as possible without ruining the silhouette and/or deformation characteristics of the asset. You also need to be mindful of creating meshes that will bake without giving you too much trouble.

AdvisableRobin

^ Yes. Spending a few extra poly's on an asset is worth production time saved.

hexflow

Thank you for the insightful info everyone, especially Count Vert, I always forget about the silhouette and obviously I need to pay better attention to it.

Eric Chadwick

We have some info here that should help too
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Polygon_Count#Typical_Triangle_Counts
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Topology#Realtime_Topology_Examples