Details on art asset limits/guidelines

Hello,

My main interest in modding is bringing new art assets into the game, and getting it to do new things. I have been able to get new models and items in fairly easily. What I have been unable to find is any information or guidelines regarding model complexity. For example, I have some armor meshes I used for Skyrim, so I imagine they would work just fine. They are around 19k polys for the suits and 1800 polys for the helmets. I also have a more intricate (possibly too intricate) Iron Man model of almost 200k polys, 8k for the helmet. I am wondering if that may be too big, causing a performance loss, even if I use LOD. It would be broken out into the equip set rather then one model, but rendered together that really just adds a few more polys to the mix. So, do you have any rough guidelines or best practices regarding this sort of thing, some kind of threshold perhaps?

Thank you,

BlueFreakQ

Hmmm, that is a good question. BUT if you dont get a reply it wouldnt be to big of a challenge to implement it and then see how it handles. Also polys would only cause an issue on a computer by computer basis.

200k poly count or higher is going to probably start to see some performance issues on most low end rigs quite easily I would think. I’d try to aim for around 50k (Thats around the industry standard atm) or so for your overall poly count for a given model. Gotta keep in mind when you are modding that not everyone has a nice of rigs as we do :wink:

EDIT: 50k poly count can have an immense level of detail if the model is designed correctly or designed in zBrush.

Thanks sinarisinestro, that’s more like what I was expecting for guidelines. I’ll have to see what I can work out with this.