Unreal 2k4 Art Specs <new question about weapons>
polycounter lvl 17
Hi all,
Complete noob here, and basically I'm involved in a project that's got me taking a crash course in the mod scene. I'm going to be working a project called GameFlood, which is an offshoot of Turbosquid.com. It's not public yet, but it's going to be heavily focused on the PC mod scene.
Sorry if this is a repeat post (couldn't find anything similar). Can anyone help give me an idea of what a good idea of minimum art specs for UT2k4 assets would be? I found this on the Epic website, but I'm guessing it's a little dated:
<font color="yellow">Here are the guidelines we used in building content for Unreal Tournament 2004, one of the most recently shipped Unreal Engine 2 games. Different genres of games will have widely varying expectations of player counts, scene size, and performance and PC capabilities increase over time, so these specifications should be regarded as one data point for one project rather than as mandatory specifications.
§ Characters: Our typical characters contain 2000-3000 triangles, and are mapped with one texture in compressed DXT1 or DXT4 format at a typical resolution of 512x512 or 1024x1024.
§ Bones: Typical characters have 30-60 bones.
§ Typical static meshes typically contain 300-3000 triangles, and are mapped with one texture of resolution 512x512 or 1024x1024.
§ Environments: Typical environments have 150-300 objects in view, for a total count of 50,000 to 150,000 triangles in view.
§ Terrain: Height maps are typically 128x128 to 256x256 in resolution; typical terrain has 4-10 alpha layers.
</font>
I've seen a bunch of character model mods out there that are in the 5k poly, so clearly things have advanced a bit. I'm wondering if anyone knows if things like poly count limits are something determined by the UT engine, or user hardware? The specs would be the biggest help - it's been surprisingly hard to find this info.
Thanks all.
Complete noob here, and basically I'm involved in a project that's got me taking a crash course in the mod scene. I'm going to be working a project called GameFlood, which is an offshoot of Turbosquid.com. It's not public yet, but it's going to be heavily focused on the PC mod scene.
Sorry if this is a repeat post (couldn't find anything similar). Can anyone help give me an idea of what a good idea of minimum art specs for UT2k4 assets would be? I found this on the Epic website, but I'm guessing it's a little dated:
<font color="yellow">Here are the guidelines we used in building content for Unreal Tournament 2004, one of the most recently shipped Unreal Engine 2 games. Different genres of games will have widely varying expectations of player counts, scene size, and performance and PC capabilities increase over time, so these specifications should be regarded as one data point for one project rather than as mandatory specifications.
§ Characters: Our typical characters contain 2000-3000 triangles, and are mapped with one texture in compressed DXT1 or DXT4 format at a typical resolution of 512x512 or 1024x1024.
§ Bones: Typical characters have 30-60 bones.
§ Typical static meshes typically contain 300-3000 triangles, and are mapped with one texture of resolution 512x512 or 1024x1024.
§ Environments: Typical environments have 150-300 objects in view, for a total count of 50,000 to 150,000 triangles in view.
§ Terrain: Height maps are typically 128x128 to 256x256 in resolution; typical terrain has 4-10 alpha layers.
</font>
I've seen a bunch of character model mods out there that are in the 5k poly, so clearly things have advanced a bit. I'm wondering if anyone knows if things like poly count limits are something determined by the UT engine, or user hardware? The specs would be the biggest help - it's been surprisingly hard to find this info.
Thanks all.
Replies
"Can anyone help give me an idea of what a good idea of minimum art specs for GAME QUAILTY UT2k4 assets would be? "
A maximum limit, if any, would be helpful, too.
The default player models are usually around the low end of the 2k range, sometimes as low as 1500-1800 triangles.
I don't think there's any hard-coded limit to how detailed meshes can get, but it's kinda pointless making a 10,000 poly model when a 5,000 poly model would do the same job. Basically it's down to common sense for the most part. Also bear in mind scalability, and how many meshes will be appearing on the screen at a given time. If you're gonna have a horde of bad guys on-screen at all times, it makes sense to keep their polygon count low, while if you're gonna have a large single creature or specific character, you can go higher if the detail is necessary. Personally I wouldn't go above 5-6k triangles for a player unless it's ABSOLUTELY necessary.
1024x1024 textures are usually fine. The info you pasted above seems pretty accurate and, with good modelling practices, should go a long way.