Low Poly VS. High Poly in AAA Games??

Amank679

Hey everyone, this is my first official post on here. I'm a student majoring in Game Design and Development with a focus on environment art.  I've been networking a little and some critique I've received from AAAstudio artists is to up my poly count on objects. 

I've been modeling 3d assets for some time now but my reason for staying near a low poly count is to favor engine performance, I use Unity the most.

I want to know, what does "high poly" exactly mean? How far can I really push the objects in terms of polys and what object would classify as high poly?


Thanks In Advance!

poopipe

Use as much geometry as is required to make it look right at the desired viewing distance but no more than that - anyone saying otherwise is usually talking bollocks.

BagelHero

Amank, are you familiar with the baking process? It would also help if you linked some of your work so we had some context on why this is a comment you've been getting.

Generally, it is a good idea to try and have as a low a polycount as is reasonable to make something look decent from the desired viewing distance (as poopipe said), but if it's impacting how your assets look it's usually safe to add a bit more geo. You just gotta be smart with where you use it.

Though usually, when people say "high poly" they mean a mesh that can easily go into the 100s of thousands or millions, which is used to "bake" a normal map that can be used to make the lower poly version of the mesh appear to be more detailed when lit. So there's no vs about it; you need both a high poly and low poly object. So some clarification seems necessary here if you'd like more answers, I think.

Animas

It could be that his low poly is too low poly.
Another thing could be that his high poly doesn't do the high polys work. Meaning there are no details that would justify hp.
So without seeing your work its hard to judge what they ment, it could be anything at this point.

Amank679

Thanks, everyone for your reply so far!  Here is a Freight Container I'm currently working on. I'm debating actually modeling out the actual rectangular parts that we see on these items or just adding them in as normal maps. This object will be part of a larger game environment in Unity so I still want to be mindful of topology. to favor engine performance (60 FPS+ preferable) .

I am familiar with baking normals as I usually do that in ZBrush with the sculpted detail. I know that baking high poly detail onto low poly objects is also a thing I have done it once before for a character but I'm not sure if it's the best route to go for a game environment asset.

Thanks again in advance for the feedback!

poopipe

Another rule of thumb is that I
if it affects the visible silhouette it should be there in geometry.

In this case..
If its an FPS and that's the size of a shipping container you should model the ridges on the sides. 

If its a racing game and it's at the side of the track then you probably shouldn't 

Amank679

Thanks for the reply Pooppie, that was really helpful! 

Mark Dygert

So LODs, Levels of Detail, they play a pretty big role. You want your object to look good close up and then degrade the farther away the camera moves. It's easier to cut details out or optimize more aggressively but it's a lot harder to go the other way. So when creating assets it better to go with a little more detail than a little less. That doesn't mean you can be careless and toss polys around where they don't belong but you can add bevels and smooth out cylinders to get good looking assets, up close.

Amank679

Thanks for your reply, that's a good point. Mark! LODs are definitely something I'm considering.