Hi all, I had a quick question about general polygon limits. I’m not necessarily trying to make an extremely low poly treasure chest, but I do want to be realistic in terms of efficiency (whereas Unreal Engine 4 is concerned). A lot of times I get carried away with wanting to add a bit too much detail to edges, when I’m not sure if I should just leave them hard, so I end up beveling them.
So could someone tell me if whether or not 1,600 tris is decent/too much for this model? In terms of scope, PC and new gen consoles are what I’d be aiming for. Thanks.
I’m not sure of all the benchmarks that have been done with UE4 and PS4 / XBOX1, but I think we could approximate. Each one should be able to do at least 1/2 billion triangles per second with mostly baked lights. If you want 60 FPS then you are shooting for around 8.3 million triangles on the screen at a time (drop that by a lot if you use a lot of dynamic lights.) Unless you have a really large interior scene with a ton of objects everywhere, I am guessing that you aren’t even close to bumping that limit.
My opinion is that the console hardware is getting powerful enough that developers don’t have to stress quite as much about keeping the polys super low. If there is a noticeable difference in quality, I would keep the extra geometry.
Thanks for the quick replies! One of the first things I learned about modeling is keep your tri count as low as you can while getting the shape you want. It may be a good thing to know early, but sometimes I do feel like I hamper myself because I feel like I’m going too high in polygons; so sometimes I just need to ask for other people’s opinions. But I’m glad for the answers.
Just to add a little here. It’s nice to have that higher poly version for your hero prop as well. With a good use of LODs you can still have this high model so that when the player is close to the mesh they won’t notice polygon edges as bad (mostly on curved surfaces). I personally don’t worry about poly count near as much and instead focus more time on getting LODs set up properly so that I can get a nice transition and keep my FPS high.
They really aren’t that hard. Just make the various versions with more or fewer polygons.
Import the base that is the highest Poly version you want to be your hero object > Open it in the Mesh View > Details panel on the right > Under LODs > Import LOD1.
You can have up to three other LODs. There is an auto feature that will calculate it for you or you can choose to set the distances yourself.
It’s a fairly simple process that can have great performance gains. If you end up having questions regarding it feel free to ask anytime!
But instead of using a generator/modifier I would recommend you to decrease it manually -> so that you have full controle over the lod creation process (but some gen/modifiers are pretty good)
Had to change a bit of the edges after fixing ngons, and it came out around 1800 tris. That aside, I have some wireframe shots. The cage is rather simple, but the bulk of the tris come from the beveled edges and the reworked edge loops that make it possible:
You have a bunch of edges that could be cleaned up or removed. The general approach is you want to remove any edges that are affecting the silhouette of the mode.
But it depends on your level how many tris the meshes can have.
