Art test for Nintendo Wii

MrD

I have been asked to put together a little art test for a local developer/publisher for a Wii game. Now the thing is that i have never worked on stuff for this platform. The specs were not too hard to find out and also i was given a guideline (for levels) of under 70.000 tris onscreen. Since i was mostly doing chars before i am wondering how best to ensure not to exceed the 70k while modelling in 3dsmax??
Do the 70k tris really mean 70k on the screen (eg you settle for any view and have the polies counted?) or will some polies outside of the camera's focus get stored in memory and Need to be included- thus further reducing the count?
Hope i phrased that clear enough

Thanks!*

Farfarer

If you were specified "70,000 on screen" then it probably means exactly that. Wherever you are in the level, it shouldn't render more than 70k triangles.

Technically you can get around that with clipping/blocking and LODs and other trickery to get more stuff in a level... but if it's an art test I'd just stick with a 70k tri limit.

ZacD

its better to ask the developer/publisher if you can, I've heard of people thinking polys were tris and they ended up only using half their budget.

MrD

Thank you..i'd Be glad to stick to the specs but they are rather vague (first Wii title for the Publisher) so i'm trying to get as much additional Information as possible.

Texture size seems an even bigger issue so I am prepared to scale things down if needed later. This is just a First test.

The game is supposed to be like God of war gameplaywise. Currently my plan is to use these specs: so I am prepared to scale things down if needed later. This is just a First test.

The game is supposed to be like God of war gameplaywise. Currently my plan is to use these specs:

Main Char: 3500 polies texture: 512x512 + 256x256
NPCs: up to 2500 plus 512x512 ( depending upon Size)
Level polycount: 45.000 plus 10 512x512 textures (some Split up in 256x256)

you guys have any first Hand Experience?

Sorry about the typos...crappy iPhone autocorrect

Farfarer

Only very brief first hand experience (project got shelved). 70k sounds about right for the polycount, our levels were hovering about 150k and we had to pretty much halve that for Wii.

The art style we had meant that it's hard to give meaningful texture specs... but what you've outlined there sound reasonable enough. Downsizing textures is easy enough anyway.

If it's a God of War type game - as in, essentially a 2D platformer from a 3D perspective - you could probably go much higher than that for polycount, as you could load in/out unseen segments of the level as you progress through it. The whole thing doesn't need to be in memory at once.

If it's a debut title for that developer, there's likely going to be an initial period of trial and error as to what it can and can't handle, so I wouldn't worry too much and just use a bit of common sense.

fade1

if you ask me, i'd stick with 1500 polys for characters and i think half the texture size, you suggested is still alright.(you can scale those down later ofcoz..)
you have to skin all those vertices, so it's probably smart to be careful here...
the wii just renders approx. 640*480 (4:3), so if you're characters are not screen size you waste texture space.

MrD

thank you for your thoughts
i will keep it in mind and do some testing

BNeutral

fade1 wrote: »

if you ask me, i'd stick with 1500 polys for characters and i think half the texture size, you suggested is still alright.(you can scale those down later ofcoz..)
you have to skin all those vertices, so it's probably smart to be careful here...
the wii just renders approx. 640*480 (4:3), so if you're characters are not screen size you waste texture space.

I think those are more likely handheld limits.
Wii is pretty much Gamecube+, so looking at this old blogpost http://www.rsart.co.uk/2007/08/27/yes-but-how-many-polygons/ I'd say main char should be about 4000-7000, depending how much of him/her you'll see.
As for levels, depends on the engine and how much of the level you see at once.

Kuki

I worked on a Wii production and for the main character poly count you're on the right way, 3000-3500k is acceptable. The only suggestion is to generally use 256x256 and 128x128 textures for the environment. 512x512 is a huge size and should be used only in case of big detailed elements such as a custom building facade etc..

MrD

ok so you let the engine and decals worry about tiling? for my test i have to stick to max so i will have to emulate this
is 512x512 acceptable for the skybox? guess ultimately i'll have to keep guessing till it's exported. good news on the char though )

fade1

i'd be careful with polys for characters. as i said, you have to skin all those vertices and if you have 3500 verts + 10*1500 verts for some enemies, you have 19k skinned verts. you need to process those every frame(and we love 60 frame games ). i think your engine could get problems.
mario in galaxy has about 5k polys, but there aren't many skinned chars around. so it really depends on the type of game. plus you have to consider that if you're talking about a god of war type of game, your chars are usually 100-150 pixels tall. more detail/polys make no difference...often it's better to use those polys for the environment.
i usually use skydomes with 2048*512 res, which is quite big, but below this it gets a little blury. or you can do a trick and use a gradient and put cloud decals on top. that's what mario galaxy is doing...

MrD

true enough what you say about the characters. the hero will need a certain polycount for cutscenes but the basic enemies if we go god of war style are usually pretty small (npc's in cutscenes being the exception)

thank you guys! your feedback is most apprecuated