Lacos
01-03-2006, 07:09 AM
Whats the definition of each?
I seem to hear a lot of talk on the forum about lower poly being better. Conserving polygons and texture sizes to be a primary function of the artist, yet with one of my friends from school who was lucky enough to be hired he tells me the opposite. I hear from him instead of making a building as low poly, low resolution(while maintaining clarity) texture as you can go you should be making building with 2-3k polgons and 1024's as a texture. So my quest to you, judging this by either pc or ps standards, just how much is too much? What should be an average amount of polygons for environment meshes? At the bottom of this post i'll have a list of some meshes and I would greatly appreciate some feed back as to what a suggested polygon/texture limit would be for them. I'm talking from a GTA game to something out of Tom Clancy's mindset. Should I be making buildings with interiors to run through or should I be leaving them solid? I find that each time I am almost finished recreating my demo reel someone jumps up and says i'm doing it wrong again or that i'm modeling as if i'm from a few years back when conserving polygons really counted. So, i'm here appealing to you, my fellow artists, what would be some average limitations for polygons and texture sizes for the following;
Main Buildings(we're talking the big buildings) -
Smaller Buildings(houses, stores, 1-2 story buildings) -
ground(i'll assume making a tiling texture would do for this)
objects(mail boxes, street lights, crates, barrels, fences, grass?) -
From my experiences they would go more or less like the following(exterior only, no interiors);
Main Buildings - no more than 800 polygons, 1x512 or 1x1024 depending on how long it will be in view of the player and if it is an important building or not.
Smaller Buildings - no more than 350 polygons, 1x512
ground - 512 or 1024 tiling image
objects - as low as you can go, 1x128 or 1x256 depending on the size of the object. Mostly 1x128's.
Am I going about this at too low a resolution/poly count? should I be creating my meshes at higher details for "low poly"? I am asking this for games that would mainly be on the PC or PS as i've heard that if you can model for PC/PS you can switch to other systems with less of a learning curve in the transition.
-ACU
I seem to hear a lot of talk on the forum about lower poly being better. Conserving polygons and texture sizes to be a primary function of the artist, yet with one of my friends from school who was lucky enough to be hired he tells me the opposite. I hear from him instead of making a building as low poly, low resolution(while maintaining clarity) texture as you can go you should be making building with 2-3k polgons and 1024's as a texture. So my quest to you, judging this by either pc or ps standards, just how much is too much? What should be an average amount of polygons for environment meshes? At the bottom of this post i'll have a list of some meshes and I would greatly appreciate some feed back as to what a suggested polygon/texture limit would be for them. I'm talking from a GTA game to something out of Tom Clancy's mindset. Should I be making buildings with interiors to run through or should I be leaving them solid? I find that each time I am almost finished recreating my demo reel someone jumps up and says i'm doing it wrong again or that i'm modeling as if i'm from a few years back when conserving polygons really counted. So, i'm here appealing to you, my fellow artists, what would be some average limitations for polygons and texture sizes for the following;
Main Buildings(we're talking the big buildings) -
Smaller Buildings(houses, stores, 1-2 story buildings) -
ground(i'll assume making a tiling texture would do for this)
objects(mail boxes, street lights, crates, barrels, fences, grass?) -
From my experiences they would go more or less like the following(exterior only, no interiors);
Main Buildings - no more than 800 polygons, 1x512 or 1x1024 depending on how long it will be in view of the player and if it is an important building or not.
Smaller Buildings - no more than 350 polygons, 1x512
ground - 512 or 1024 tiling image
objects - as low as you can go, 1x128 or 1x256 depending on the size of the object. Mostly 1x128's.
Am I going about this at too low a resolution/poly count? should I be creating my meshes at higher details for "low poly"? I am asking this for games that would mainly be on the PC or PS as i've heard that if you can model for PC/PS you can switch to other systems with less of a learning curve in the transition.
-ACU