What is low?

[la_piaga]

"Low poly"... interesting expression since the cognition of low is totally sujective...
Philosophy apart, for a low poly model is usually ment a model which has to be rendered in real time (usually by a game engine), so it's all about host hardware, engine features/efficiency, and kind of game.
Now, if You have to model somethig for a specific product, and you're not a wizard (or also the technical director :D), they have to tell you the poly range.
If your will is to model something general purpose for your portfolio, I'd suggest You to be (for charactes) in the 2k - 4k range.
This is a PERSONAL suggestion since nowadays for most games these are the numbers, but I'm not a talent scout so I'll leave the precise answer to someone more into it.

ciao. :)

[sadistic]

From memory I think the cmr3 cars were about 13-16k but being rally they'd only have 1 on screen.. can't remember any others atm. But 400/8000 doesn't sound like a very good balance, try and limit the wheel detail to texture as much as possible. You got a pic?

Characters range a fair bit with fodder still remaining round the 1-1.5k mark or less (depending on design) and some ingame cutscene characters as high as 7. But 2-4k is a safe general folio limit for normal characters. It's always good showing you can work with different limits anyway.

[Wildfire]

Sorry did I miss a 0? i meant 4000 for the body and 8000 for the total

[pearson]

Actually there is a solution to this: LODs*. Make the car at 10k and then make a reduced version at 5-6k and another in the 1500-3k range. Besides being a very good exercise (learning how to keep the same shape w/ progressively fewer polys) this means that you have a version of the car that is about right for many different companies/games.

As a tip, I would recommend dropping the polys on the wheels dramatically from the top res to the next one. Replace the lost detail by using a better texture on them.


* Level Of Detail. The game switches to a lower-res version of the model as the model gets farther from the camera.

[Wildfire]

Cool I thought I'd try that, I have a car model currently at 9500, and some save with it at lower details.

At what point (poly count) does the wheels become textures? At the moment I tend to just model the wheels with detail on the front and squared off at the back. I take it at some point they just become textured cylinders, rather than the spokes being geometry. Around abouts when is this?

[akewt]

in my opinion it dpends entirely on wot game your modeling for. if its a car game there gonna be high. but for a prop obviously low. low 2-3k high 16-18k.

[KoS]

recently game engines have grown to accept models around 4-5k as average, although im still using a slower computer i usually aim for <1k and most of the time it works

some that i am making for Starsiege Tribes(1, the really old version :p ) are around 200-300 with characters about 500-700

its the skinning that will really make the model, sometimes you can fool the eye into thinking theres more detail in the model then there actually is...keep that in mind when adding details

[Boyd Lake]

One more thing to remember... The concept ( and genre) of a game pretty much determine where you invest processing resources of the game engine.

For example, cars in a racing game would require more polys than cars in another game design where driving was a secondary gameplay feature. Conversely, characters driving the vehicles in a racing game won't really need to be as detailed as the vehicle.

The environment is a huge factor in what resources you can give to character details. For example, the environments in a fighting game like Soul Calibur are very local and therefore can be created at much less cost than for games with huge expansive exteriors where characters traverse great distances. This allows for more detail and resources for the focal point of the gameplay.

So, what is too high for one project may actually be too low for another. The best advice is probably the LOD comment by pearson. Most all games utilize LODs.

[Beroc-LOD]

I make cars for an older game, Carmageddon TDR, and most models there do great around 3k-4k.... but I could choose a little higher....

In respect for LOD's, we can have up to 4 of em, or just one model... Since of course I am lazy, and not getting paid, I do the one model thing.... but with LOD's I could make models around 6k, 3k, 1k and 300..... Though, of course, all those numbers are subjective to the engine, and how much work it does on the substructure of what you are doing.... Games like F1 2002 could take up to 10k and gave, I think 4 to 8 LOD's... which made it a very attractive game, artistically, though I never got any of the higher poly stuff to play correctly.

The best bet is that if you have a game you wanna make a car for, make it how you want, put it in the game, if it does great, go a little higher... if not, lower... experiment.... Shoot, if you are not getting paid, you have control.... Course, if you are, you get told how many polys before you start.... Only of course to have the game designers redo the poly cap.... so you have to redo the models.... oh... about 5 times before they get thier head out of thier rump.... LOL

[pearson]

@ Wildfire - Sorry for not getting back here sooner. We just had pretty big layoffs, so my concentration has been a bit off.

About your question of when to swith to a textured cylinder, I would do it at the 2nd LOD. That is to say, only the highest resolution should have real modeled wheels, all the other LODs should just have texture. Remember that the wheel will usually be spinning anyway, and you can make the texture by rendering the actually geometry from the highest level of detail model. Just don't cast hard shadows or it will look funny when the texture rotates! :p

@ La_piaga - Yes, "low-poly" is extremely subjective. I actually had a rep for EA tell me 2 years ago, when I was trying to get a job as a low-poly modeler, "Oh, we don't do low-poly anymore.":rolleyes: I just laughed.

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