Next Generation of Polly count?

#1

I was wondering if anyone knows what the average poly count will be for next generation console games? (The X-Box 2, PS3, etc…) Or even next generation PC games?

I THINK that the average today runs between 1000 and 2000 for the average character? Mabie a little more for a main character?

The only reason I ask is because Im building up my list of products on turbosquid and building up my portfolio to show to clients. So if i can use a higher poly, that would obviously make my work more attractive.

Thanx guys! :slight_smile:

#2

I’m also curious about poly counts. I’m working with some guys on an FPS for PC and I was wondering what would be the best poly count for NPCs/monsters and best count for main/important characters? Any help is appreaciated

#3

Prolly around 10-20k or so, but such real number is going to become more and more irrelevant, already kinda is
Make stuff as highest poly as possible, if you need 2 milion then do so. You are going to have to render displacement and normal maps in the future, and for that you can model everything in whatever polycount you want as it will be downscaled later on to a few thousand poly model.
So provide both, a few thousand poly and a couple of really high poly models for normal map purposes so you can show you can do both types of modelling
Few people can do high poly modelling, and a lot of people can make low poly models, if you want to stand out do the first and at the highest level of quality :slight_smile:

#4

I’m not really sure what the rest of the team is working with. All I know is they are using the Torque Engine. So far I have a character with over 4200 tris. Is that going to be alright if say we’ve got like a town area with 10 or so people wandering around on screen not to mention the environment and 800 polys for a hand and probably 700-1500 for weapons? Does this seem like a good budget, or is it alittle old thinking?

#5

It sounds reasonable to me, although it depends on your hardware. I’m not personally familiar with Torque, but your best bet should be to ask your programmers and/or lead artist what your budget is. If you don’t know how the engine handles polycounts, find out from the rest of the team.

If they don’t know, stick with what you’ve got and try it out! Also remember that just because you’re allowed to use 7500 polys doesn’t mean that you have to - be as economical as you can.

#6

LOD is your friend. If Torque supports level of detail in the terrain, and also the character models, you can afford a few high quality characters. The ones farther away will just be detailed down (if they’re too far away to see the little details why make the GPU draw them anyways?)

If you read the specs of GPUs on Nvidia’s and ATI’s websites, they say modern GPUs can push millions of vertices, and have absurd pixel fill rates, etc. So if you’re an artist, don’t skimp too much on the detail. Let the programmers tweak the models in real time to fit the hardware budget. Commercial game developers have to design for a wide spectrum of users with different hardware. To be able to dynamically tune your game assets in-game is key to satisfying all those gamers.

#7

I am thinking 10x the current number of poly.

#8

For what is worth, Alyx (HL2) is a bit over 8k.

DPC

#9

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