Need help for poly-count (triangle count)

Development Asset Creation
1

So, I’m making a AAA game, using multi-res in blender, and Zbrush, so I Won’t have near the polycount (Triangle Count) I plan to use 1k, and 2k maps (Texture, and normal), and rarely 4k. It will be a open world game, with the same realalisim as DayZ, including complex AI, hunting, and more. Although mine will be like 300-500 sqaure miles map, but it will be mainly ocean, with maybe 50-75 islands, from around .5, to 20 square mile islands, with small towns, to loot from, along with ocean floors, coldness, breath, pressure, ect. And any where from 100-500 player count for multiplayer. I plan to use LOD, and chunks. But the main quistion I have is for the ship, and AI/player count. I want to have tons of different ships, including aircraft carriers, cruise ships, fishing boats, cargo ship, ect. So my question is how many polys should I have on average for ships (As I want all ships enterable, and detailed, and as some of them are really big), and what is the max poly count (Or triangle) And then what should the AI, and players triangle count (Including animals, and fish)

Last but not least, I want it to work on 4GB computer, for modern computers (windows 10) On all low settings. (As it would be ready in a few years)

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Still need help guys. :frowning:

3

It depends, are the ships going to be completely open for the player to explore, or just the main deck/weapons/navigation? A large detailed ship might end up being 40k-100k from a close 3rd person angle. Polycount aren’t really a common bottleneck in modern games as long as you are being reasonable.

Characters probably up to 40k for close ups and cinematics with closer to 10-20k for normal in game cases.
For small animals and fish, you could easily go up to 0-2k without a big difference in performance impact.
Closer to human sized animals probably up to 5k.

5

Well the ships will be open, so everything will be deatiled. I will be using multi-res for all cylinders, and anything with a curve, so practically 90% of everything

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Modern games typically can handle rendering 2-5 million tris at once, so an entire ship might be at that point or higher if everything is set to LOD0.