Character Polycounts?

Canadian Ink

I was just wondering if theres any info out there bout polycounts/texture sizes for characters on the different systems?

For Example

DS -
PSP -
MMO (World of warcraft relative) -
iPhone -
Wii -
Next Gen -

The reason that I ask is because I am working on some character stuff right now and want to be able to show a range of characters across the spectrum from super low poly to next gen. Thanks!

Mimp

I wouldn't worry too much about axact polycounts.

Employers are looking for you to show good use of polys. No matter what the poly budget is, you should be able to show that you can produce a model that uses polygons efficiently, and is textured well.

Try by looking at what other people have done, take their polycount and texture budget, and try and produce something of a similar standard.

Junkie_XL

Mimp wrote: »

I wouldn't worry too much about axact polycounts.

Employers are looking for you to show good use of polys. No matter what the poly budget is, you should be able to show that you can produce a model that uses polygons efficiently, and is textured well.

Try by looking at what other people have done, take their polycount and texture budget, and try and produce something of a similar standard.

I'm curious to know how important quads are? I was surprised to see the DW4 winner use all tris when he did a retopo.

renderhjs

Polycounts are stupid and I hate these questions because you reduce your work to technical terms. If you were a programmer or Techn. artist yes that would matter to your work. But if you are just an artist you should shine with other qualifications.
Just look at games that are out there on the platforms, study the screenshots visually to get feeling for them. It is simply not just poly counts that differ but also tricks and effects that each engine or platform is good for.

For example on low spec engines you will see more non-shaded characters with painted Textures whereas on the current hi performance consoles and PC usually normal-mapping AO maps ect. are used. So its imo. way more about the style and tricks that each platform offer- not just brute force triangle counts.

If you really really want to get the exact polycounts just ask the programmer of such an engine or the technical director becuase it depends on way to many variables and part of getting to know those variables is to actually test things out .

Piflik

Quads don't exist...at least not when rendering. All polygons are triangulated. Always. Since the automatic triangulation is in general not very good, most artists triangulate their meshes by hand, to have complete control over the look of the model without having to add additional vertices. Quads are for modelling/SubD only.

(Meshes for prerendered movies aren't made from tris, because the higher the polycount, the lower the impact of the automatic triangulation)

Junkie_XL

Piflik wrote: »

Quads don't exist...at least not when rendering. All polygons are triangulated. Always. Since the automatic triangulation is in general not very good, most artists triangulate their meshes by hand, to have complete control over the look of the model without having to add additional vertices. Quads are for modelling/SubD only.

(Meshes for prerendered movies aren't made from tris, because the higher the polycount, the lower the impact of the automatic triangulation)

Let me rephrase. Wouldn't tris like what the DW4 winner did be frowned upon because it messes up the workflow for the rigger/animator his character would normally be handed off to? Rigging quads is so much easier with the Skin Modifier. I would've thought the judges for DW who work in the industry would've not liked that aspect of his character...

Taylor Hood

How many times..... it depends!!

Canadian Ink

Thanks for the responses!

East

Junkie_XL wrote: »

Let me rephrase. Wouldn't tris like what the DW4 winner did be frowned upon because it messes up the workflow for the rigger/animator his character would normally be handed off to? Rigging quads is so much easier with the Skin Modifier. I would've thought the judges for DW who work in the industry would've not liked that aspect of his character...

I don't see how this would be an issue. Especially with lower poly counts when you normally work in triangles to get the most out of every last one.

Like Piflik says, it's common to triangulate models by hand so you get total control over how the edges flow. If you leave it to be automatically triangulated you sometimes end up with edges that are spun the wrong way diagionally, which in turn can lead to bad topology.

Other than that it's very difficult to give a poly count. It depends on the game. I just finished working on a Wii title where the characters' polycount sometimes exceeded 10,000 triangles with multiple 512x512px texture maps. On the next Wii title I expect this count to be below 2,000 triangles and <256px maps for characters.