So i’m looking into making a game like dota 2, would the level design /props/items/environment foliage (in Dota ) be low-poly or high-poly?
I guess another way another way i can ask my question would be: I plan on having a open world map, so its going to be a large map, but i want the world to look nice like “Dota 2” those trees look not incredibly detailed but have nice texture to them. Would i want Low-poly or high-poly?
I’m pretty new to posting and asking question, so please do ask if anyone is unclear as to what i am asking for.
Anything is very much appreciated and thank you in advance.
You already answered the question yourself. You like the trees in some game and think they look good - not because they are detailed or high poly, but because the textures make them look convincing.
For a large map you usually want thousands of instances in it - the more plants you have the more demanding the game gets towards hardware, so a low poly approach is the only reasonable approach in this case. If you have a room and just one flower in the room you may want it to be high poly as that makes it look better for close ups, but for fast paced shooters that isn’t so important
Depends how close you are getting. The trees in DotA 2 are probably somewhere between 200-500 polys each. High or low poly is subjective to the use case.
The beauty of unreal is that you can generate level of detail easily so if you are close up meshes can be high poly and far away they are low poly even when they are instanced. The way you handle lighting, art design, texture assignment and lod transition is more important than raw poly count.