PSP car model polygon count question

RETRO_BOB

I a student who is currently using Maya and I have always wanted to try building a low geometry vehicle but I am not sure about the triangle count.
I have this idea for building an old BMW 325i 1972 as my first vehicle and I want to build it with a PSP budget in mind (for a standard racing game).
Does anyone know what a standard polycount for this car in a racing game would be?

Buzzy

for PSP, probably a few thousand triangles. But it really depends on alot of other factors, such as the number of other vehicles, complexity of environment, etc.

There is no definite answer to this question. So, if I were you, I'd just pick a reasonably low number and stick to it. Maybe 2000 triangles.

RETRO_BOB

Hi Buzzy,
Thanks for your reply.
For my car idea I also want the doors to fall off (side doors, boot door and bonnet door) and inside of the car one seat for the dirver with a searing wheel (like a stunt drivers car).
Could I still do this with 2000 triangles?

Xoliul

If you try really hard, maybe, but I wouldn't count on it. For me 2000 triangles is just enough to do a decent exterior with wheels. Things would get really blocky and edgy if I tried to fit more in that budget. If you go higher you can fit a lot in though, here's an old car of mine, I modeled almost everything with 5000 tri's: http://www.laurenscorijn.com/website/projects/F355/

edit: looking at my car's wireframe again, 3-4000 is definitely doable. You're just gonna be sacrificing smoothing by leaving out subdivisions on things like hood, windows and doors. Not a problem if you do fullbright textures without reflections.

RETRO_BOB

Hi Xoliul, very nice work on the Farrari model and I really like the detail under the hood.
I will make a start on the model tonight and post my progress.

RETRO_BOB

Hi Everyone,

I have decided to model the BMW M3 1987 model simply because I have better image references for this car.
Anyway please check out my progress.

renderhjs

there are several edges in there that are not really needed in order to define the 3d shape- but I guess that can be part of optimizing once you have the basic shape down. Like some edges seem to flow through all parts of the car which are not always really needed especially if its a low poly aka portable game.

Also wheels can often be a major triangle count factor because you need to factor them in 4 times. So get everything down (full car model with all 4 wheels, bottom, windows, interior or whatever comes with the car) and have a look at your triangle stats. From there on aim for something that makes sense and start merging, splitting and so on verts and edges to smartly decrease the final triangle count.

Xoliul

Renderhjs, while you are right about those edges in a way, you have to keep in mind they can aslo serve the purpose of ensuring better shading and reflections.

retro Bob, first off, you best create a topic in PnP for this.
Secondly, you're actually doing pretty well. Most people that do their first car end up having terrible polyflow, beyond saving even. Your body is pretty decent, good job on that.
I do have a few remarks:
-Don't cut in the body and panel lines too soon, especially not when the general wireframe/flow isn't final yet.
-Also, you don't need to actually open up those panel lines, just have a single edge follow them, and suggest depth with a texture. Keep looking at your wireframe, if it gets too dense (wire color dominates surface color) then you know you're overdoing it for lowpoly.
-Make sure your spend your polygons on rounding things evenly, the corner of the front bumper is very blocky.
-I would always have a strip running around the wheelarches, it's just cleaner and easier.
-Your underside is terribly wasteful. You can optimize the hell out of that thing, use as little polygons as possible on it; you'll never see enough of that thing to warrant any more tri's than the pure minimum.
-Your engine and interior, they look a bit sloppy and rushed compared to the rest. I think if you'd optimize the stuff I mentioned, you can spend more here and get it to look nicer. Also keep things accurate, you seem to oversimplify there.

RETRO_BOB

I’m still not sure what triangle count I should be aiming for when building cars for the PSP, but I will try to aim for 2500 -3000 triangles.
For the interior I want to keep it quite simple like the interior of a rally BMW M3, some parts like the divers seat and steering wheel will be very basic geometry with textures filling in the details.
In my progress so far I have taken out some of the edges which I feel is not necessary for the vehicles silhouette and I have sorted out the underside.
Still quite early progress so far but I will try to sort out the blocky front end.


Thanks for the feedback guy its really helping me out and hopefully I can show you guys some nice results.