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Doubt: New to Game Art Polys/Triangles.... Help Me

shadow0806
shadow0806
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shadow0806
Hai friends, I am new to game art. I want to know what is the difference between polys and triangles. If say I want to do a character with 1000 triangles or 1000 polys what is the difference and how could I know that. Kindly explain. Thanks in advance.
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  • dfacto
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    dfacto polycounter lvl 18
    Games use triangles, so if you want to make a model with 1000 polys you'll almost certainly be talking about 1000 triangles. Even if you model it with quads (four sided poly) it will have to be triangulated (each quad split into tris) in order to get into a game engine. This doesn't apply to highpoly work though, just stuff that needs to go into an engine.

    But when people talk about polycount here they almost always mean tris.
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  • aesir
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    aesir polycounter lvl 18
    just look at the definition of the word polygon and the word triangle. One has three sides. The other has three or more sides.
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  • Joseph Silverman
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    Joseph Silverman polycounter lvl 17
    Yeah, a triangle is any three sided polygon.
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  • Mark Dygert
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    Mark Dygert mod
    SupRore said it perfectly but that might be a bit cryptic to understand. If you are like me, pictures speak better than words.

    PolygonsExplained.jpg
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  • Mark Dygert
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    Mark Dygert mod
    [ QUOTE ]
    If say I want to do a character with 1000 triangles or 1000 polys what is the difference and how could I know that

    [/ QUOTE ]
    Since the examples above are all polygons but contain different amounts of triangles you can have a model that is 1000 polys but easily much more if you count the triangles.

    1000 triangles is 1000 triangles.
    1000 polys is a wild underestimated guess at how many triangle.

    Since the standard polygon shape people try to achieve is square (this means 2 tris per polygon) often your triangle count will be double what your polygon count is. So if you're given a goal of 1000 triangles, and you are only counting polygons there is a really good chance you will shoot way over the budgeted amount.
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