Poly counting!

[goodlag]

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=67921


This is a quote from Lee Perry of Epic:

"I noticed on your summary you suggested a 512x512 default skin size. I just wanted to point out that this can be significantly higher. I personally wouldn't bother doing a skin less than 1024x1024 unless you just feel uncomfortable working that large. The UT2k3 skins are actually 2 1024x1024 textures. One body, and one for the head.

2 very important things to keep in mind here though are that using textures at that size require selecting "DXT1" compression when importing a TGA into the texture browser. Here's the rub... DXT1 does not allow for an alpha channel, therefore you would have to be very clever indeed about applying shaders to such a character. If you have an alpha channel in a skin, it should come in at DXT5 compression, which is obviously much larger, and I would definitely NOT reccomend bringing in a bunch of 1024x1024s at DXT5. One is debatable.

Also, the way the engine handles state changes, it's better to have one larger texture than several smaller ones. Don't pile 3 256x256 textures on a model, it would be much more efficient to just do a single 1024 and get some bonus resolution."

So that's the deal on textures... another quote from him, in reference to creating a player model:

"I wouldn't bother working below 3000 polys or below a 1024x1024 texture, assuming I wasn't doing something funky that required an alpha channel."

I'm pretty sure player models in UT can be up to 10000 polys without any significant hit. From what I understand, you can do a low res version (3000ish) and a hires version and the game will use which ever one depending on the ingame detail settings. Don't quote me on this though, I'm still looking to confirm.

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