How many polygons should a "game-ready" assets have?

Aasmund1986

What can be considered as a "game-ready" asset when it comes to polycount?
I know it all depends on the asset, but I want to know what you guys/girls mean about this.

SnowInChina

whats meant by this is

whats your target platform ? (mobile ? console ? pc ? if pc, whats the lowest spec you want it to run?)
how important is the asset ? will you ever see it close up, or is it a background object ?
how many assets are on screen at the same time ? etc..

Aasmund1986

This is a weapon (WWII flamethrower) for a zombie-game for PC. So yes, you will get a close up view with particleinformation attached to the weapon. Were aiming to something like DayZ, using UnrealEngine.

SnowInChina

this is what i found as first google result

"Weapon models in ArmA 2 have up to 8k polies, Characters up to 10k, and vehicles up to 20k."

Mant1k0re

I'm sure plenty of people will contradict me but developping for PC in 2015 you really needn't worry too much about your polycount... You could use 10, 20 or 60,000 and it wouldn't make any noticeable difference performance wise unless you used large textures and/or a very complex shader.

The more I learn about this craft the more I think this obsession for vertex count has become all but baseless. I worry a lot more about drawcalls these days...

AdvisableRobin

I believe Far Cry 4 uses upwards of 20k for the first person weapon model. I think Nathan Drake is around 120k poly's for the upcoming Uncharted.

Mant1k0re is pretty much on the money. Don't sacrifice the quality of the asset because you think a few thousand poly's will make or break the game. Just model smart.

Aasmund1986

Thanks for the info. I heard from a developer that around 15000 polygons is normal.
EDIT: Yes AdvisableRobin, Im trying to figure out where to add division or insert loops. Also
where the parts of the model is going to be and what function it has.

Eric Chadwick

We have some more info here
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/PolygonCount#Typical_Triangle_Counts

Ashaman73

Mant1k0re wrote: »

I worry a lot more about drawcalls these days...

These worries will most likely vanish the next few years with DX12/Mantle/Vulkan APIs at our doors. Once the draw-call bottleneck is gone, other bottlenecks could evolve and it would be a wise idea to not stretch your goals on a last-gen bottleneck.

marks

5642

AdvisableRobin

@marks I just about spit coffee all over my coworker reading that.

EarthQuake

12

Obscura

XD

Lamont

Obscura wrote: »

XD

NaN!! Stop derailing the thread.

You may all continue with absurdly low polycounts so I may laugh.

Mant1k0re

Ashaman73 wrote: »

These worries will most likely vanish the next few years with DX12/Mantle/Vulkan APIs at our doors. Once the draw-call bottleneck is gone, other bottlenecks could evolve and it would be a wise idea to not stretch your goals on a last-gen bottleneck.

Don't think polygon count will become a problem again though...

It's a major concern of mine because I develop for VR and as you may know normal maps and other texture tricks do not work very well with this new medium, so your details should generally be modeled and not faked. That takes a lot of polygons.

Ashaman73

Mant1k0re wrote: »

Don't think polygon count will become a problem again though...

It's a major concern of mine because I develop for VR and as you may know normal maps and other texture tricks do not work very well with this new medium, so your details should generally be modeled and not faked. That takes a lot of polygons.

Just wanted to say, that the number of polys per model will increase with more powerful GPUs (maybe auto-tesselation), but new APIs will shift the bottleneck focus from number of drawcalls to ?, maybe number of polys, maybe bandwidth, we will see.

Nevertheless, take a look at the GDC 2015 presentation from Valve (Vlachos, Alex, Advanced VR Rendering V2). He talked about the fate of normal maps in VR and it doesn't look to be doomed yet , but yes, more distinctive details will most likely be modelled instead of being baked.

kunalht

so how to get a rough idea about poly counts for various devices?
For example if I want to make a car game, how many polys should the car have for 1) Mobile 2) PC?

Visceral

EarthQuake wrote: »

12

You promised me the perfect model poly count but all i got is a box?

Scizz

I would say approximately 2475 polys per asset.

All jokes aside, I had this same dilemma; always worrying about polycount. Obviously you have to concern yourself with it, but don't let it hinder you or derail you from making a great asset. I soon realized its shaders and textures that do the most damage.

LMP

Enough Polys to get the amount of detail that you want, but not so much that it negatively impacts performance, and certainly not more than necessary. They've got to be doing something useful.

Mant1k0re

Ashaman73 wrote: »

Just wanted to say, that the number of polys per model will increase with more powerful GPUs (maybe auto-tesselation), but new APIs will shift the bottleneck focus from number of drawcalls to ?, maybe number of polys, maybe bandwidth, we will see.

Nevertheless, take a look at the GDC 2015 presentation from Valve (Vlachos, Alex, Advanced VR Rendering V2). He talked about the fate of normal maps in VR and it doesn't look to be doomed yet , but yes, more distinctive details will most likely be modelled instead of being baked.

Yeah, I'd seen it, though tbh it's way above my head for the most part. I'm not convinced nonetheless. Any time I've tried using a normal map it looked downright horrible. Paralax works quite well though.

NDH

A better question would be to ask how many do you need?

90 000 polygons used to create a single piece of vegetation seems a lot less reasonable than to use those 90 000 polygons to create say a key character in your game.

I think it all comes down to whats reasonable or not.