Poly Counts in Games

[Anonymous]

I noticed that there is a good ratio between artists and codeys on this forum, which is rare, and that they are mostly employed, which is even rarer ( :P ), so I thought I would ask about poly-counts in games these days.

How many triangles would be budgeted and what would the size of the textures be in your experience for (a) home consoles and (b)handheld games? (Depending on the genre of games you have worked on of course, e.g. racing game or platformer). Are there texture/triangle count differences between PSP and DS?

[Anonymous]

Are there texture/triangle count differences between PSP and DS?[/quote:85b33b26b6]
Oh hell yeah. Psp is way more powerful with a dedicated GPU and pushes more pixels. Don’t have polycounts but specs tell the story, as do comparison screen shots.

ORIGINAL DS: 67 MHz ARM 946E-S + 33 MHz ARM7TDMI, 4MB RAM.

ORIGINAL PSP: 333 MHz MIPS R4000 CPU + GPU with 2 MB onboard VRAM running at 166 MHz. 32 MB main RAM (64MB on new models), and 4 MB embedded DRAM.

[Anonymous]

Seems to me that 512×512 and 1024×1024 seems to be the most common texture size on PS3 and 360.

[Anonymous]

Anyone have typical poly counts for all the current machines (including hand-helds)? It’s really hard to find information on this typically for some reason.

[Anonymous]

I guess it would be dependant on the specific game engine and the features supported by that game engine?

[Anonymous]

Depends what your making, engine,mip\maps levels, how much resources you have. Its really not a good question to ask, its a bit too vague and doesnt really tell you anything useful.

If you can do a 512×512 and 1024×1024 then your sorted.

[Anonymous]

Gears of War, Xbox 360, 2006
Wretch – 10,000 polygons with 2x 2k diffuse, specular and normal maps
Boomer – 11,000 polygons with 2x 2kdiffuse, specular and normal maps
Marcus – 15,000 polygons with 2x 2k diffuse, specular and normal maps
These are highest LODs, for cutscenes, not the in-game versions which are around 5,000 polys and with no more than 5 lights per area

Resident Evil 4, Gamecube, 2005
Leon – 10,000 polygons (no per pixel lighting, specular defined in alpha of diffuse texture)

Lost planet, X360/PC, 2007
Wayne – 12392 polygons

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, PS3 2007
Drake – 30,000 polygons, including 3,000 for his hair!

Oblivion : 8,000 polygons for its character

As the guys say, there is no fixed limit – just good guidelines depending on the engine and type of game. If you’re looking to do some low poly work for your reel, stick to a budget of 5k polys per character, and use 1024 textures.

[Anonymous]

Wow…Gears of War is lower than I expected. That’s ridiculous aboout Drake’s hair :lol:

Thanks for the reply…yeah, I’ve been sticking to under 5000.

[Anonymous]

Gears uses a lot of textures to pull off that amazing detailed look, as long as you can make the model silhouette look ’rounded’, thats half the battle.

I recommned this book oif you want to find out more about the character modelling in GOW :

http://www.amazon.com/DARTISTE-CHARACTER-MODELING-Edited-Daniel/dp/1921002352/ref=pd_sim_b_1

[Anonymous]

Wow…Gears of War is lower than I expected. That’s ridiculous aboout Drake’s hair :lol:

Thanks for the reply…yeah, I’ve been sticking to under 5000.[/quote:819b6fcf65]

Yeah as Pete said – the gears geometry was REALLY basic – saw some videos somehwere about the making of the game and I was shocked at how much work the textures were doing.

Cheers,
Ian

[Anonymous]

Wow…Gears of War is lower than I expected. That’s ridiculous aboout Drake’s hair :lol:

Thanks for the reply…yeah, I’ve been sticking to under 5000.[/quote:c43f58a813]

Yeah as Pete said – the gears geometry was REALLY basic – saw some videos somehwere about the making of the game and I was shocked at how much work the textures were doing.

Cheers,
Ian[/quote:c43f58a813]

Ya definitely. Not being a particularly artist person but I would expect though you can reduce your poly count pretty aggressively providing you had good normal maps "cast" down from high res\detailed model coupled with quality textures right? Whole point of normal maps etc. ;)

GOW is pretty special though.

I will tell you one thing though.

PGR3 had about 250-300k polys in their cars if I remember correctly. SR had 40-50k max per car, was the difference all that noticeable? Maybe it was to the trained eye or the car enthusiast, but I think 90% of the population wouldn’t really notice the difference.

[Anonymous]

Wow…Gears of War is lower than I expected. That’s ridiculous aboout Drake’s hair :lol:

Thanks for the reply…yeah, I’ve been sticking to under 5000.[/quote:59821db92b]

Yeah as Pete said – the gears geometry was REALLY basic – saw some videos somehwere about the making of the game and I was shocked at how much work the textures were doing.

Cheers,
Ian[/quote:59821db92b]

Think those videos might have been in the boxset version. Defo worth a look, some great insight. Theres also one knocking about, about MGS 2 or 3 cant remember, but some fantastic tricks used.

Not being a particularly artist person but I would expect though you can reduce your poly count pretty aggressively providing you had good normal maps "cast" down from high res\detailed model coupled with quality textures right? Whole point of normal maps etc. ;)

GOW is pretty special though.

I will tell you one thing though.

PGR3 had about 250-300k polys in their cars if I remember correctly. SR had 40-50k max per car, was the difference all that noticeable? Maybe it was to the trained eye or the car enthusiast, but I think 90% of the population wouldn’t really notice the difference.[/quote:59821db92b]

[Anonymous]

I think the latest D’Artiste (which are similar to the GPGems but for artists) has some great material on the Normal mapping behind Gears. Just FYI.

[Anonymous]

Thats the link I posted above!

[Anonymous]

Yeah I have that, some really great tips in there. The models certainly didn’t look that low though. I also heard that about PGR as well, crazy numbers. And the tracks weren’t exactly light either.

[Anonymous]

And the tracks weren’t exactly light either.[/quote:f28052aaa7]
lol. we had a couple million in the track :)

[Anonymous]

Hehe didn’t know you worked on that too.

[Anonymous]

Peter_b

Are you allowed to discuss the scene manager in PGR?

B.

[Anonymous]

Peter_b

Are you allowed to discuss the scene manager in PGR?

B.[/quote:bc0a68972a]

Why not (if i knew anything about it sure). I never worked on PGR or for Bizarre creations? ;) So no problem.

When I referred to track poly’s earlier i was talking about SEGA Rally. But that was common knowledge, just boot up the credit screen in game and see our wireframe.lol

On the other hand, I worked on SEGA Rally and that scene manager, and no I can’t discuss! But it was good and pretty tech! ;)

[Anonymous]

Ok,

I think I got my lines crossed.

Yeah, I was playing PGR (haven’t played Sega Rally, not yet anyway, but I will, honest!). and couldn’t believe the detail in the cars, and the tracks.

I figured they must be making heaving use of Occluders, coupled with a quadtree?

I’ve been keeping my eyes open for articles in the Gems series, but no joy just yet.

B.

[Anonymous]

Ok,

I think I got my lines crossed.

Yeah, I was playing PGR (haven’t played Sega Rally, not yet anyway, but I will, honest!). and couldn’t believe the detail in the cars, and the tracks.

I figured they must be making heaving use of Occluders, coupled with a quadtree?

I’ve been keeping my eyes open for articles in the Gems series, but no joy just yet.

B.[/quote:a4bb19ff23]

Yes some sort of scene management is required. Theres loads of options out there. Quad-tree, oct-tree, pvs, portals etc. Hybrids of various solutions. After all in games, theres no wrong way just a better way of doing things ;)

If you actually analyse a games terrain and contents its possible to guess what techniques are being used. I personally dont know what they used for PGR but i could make an educated guess. Probably a combination of a quad-tree and pvs.

As for artictles out there i’m pretty sure you should be able to find a few, ive definately read some in recent weeks (cant place them at mo) but there is source material out there.

[Anonymous]

I personally dont know what they used for PGR but i could make an educated guess. [/quote:9e78958852]

AFIAK, There are 7 pixies in the engine running around with a bunch of mirrors and a smoke machine*

* This may not be true though.

[Author]

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