Topology/polycount for film
polycounter lvl 5
Hi
I'm not sure if I'm asking on the correct site for this, but Is there anyone with experience in the film industry who specialises in Virtual Production workflows? Particularly for characters? I'm really struggling to find the info via Google, but I'm curious what the tri/poly count would need to be for an asset loaded into Unreal. Particularly UE5. Does anyone know what some of the technical considerations are? Or could maybe point me in the right direction for this? Thanks.
EDIT: Sorry, should point out that it's topology/polycount for films in general.
Replies
For film the limit is what your rigger can handle. You cant animate a multy million poly model. You need a subD model with displacement or a normalmap on top. Just use as many poly to get the subd shapes and blendshapes you need.
I would aim below 1mio poly.
Cool. Thanks for the advice. What I'm planning is actually a character bust for the sole purpose of practising facial likenesses, real-time hair, and hard-surface modelling. So no animation/rigging required. :) I was advised to incorporate a bit of a film/Virtual Production workflow, so I'll be able to use UDIMs and have more flexibility with the tri/poly count.
In this case the limit is how high poly a model you can realistically UV and texture. A multi million poly raw zbrush Dynamesh model won't be something you can load into Substance Painter or Mari. You'll need to create a lower poly model that you can texture and then either, use displacement, or reproject details onto it in zbrush.
For making ultra high poly Nanite models for Unreal 5 I've been making my model in Zbrush, then creating a lower poly model using Zremesher, adding UV's and then reprojecting the details onto this model from the highpoly.
Okay. What I'll probably do is sculpt it until it's pretty much finished, retop it, and then project the details back to it so I can get and make use of a low-mid poly version to unwrap and texture. I plan on using Texturing.xyz textures and projecting a head base mesh from 3D Scan Store or something using 4DWrap. One of those should come with a Displacement map.
I think I read in one Polycount thread that you can even make use of Alembic files...? Can those be used in UE4/5?
There's no point using Alembic files if you're going to export to Unreal. Just use Nanite meshes in Unreal 5 if you want something super hipoly. You can import a 1-2 million poly mesh using Nanite and it'll draw just fine. It might take 10-15 minutes to import.
many of the bigger meshes in this scene are 1 milliion polys or more:
https://youtu.be/HXD6qF5hysg
I did stumble on Nanite and was curious what it was. It sounds pretty cool. I'll have to look into giving it a try when I import the mesh in. I'll probably try and keep the tri count around 300-600,000 though. We'll see.