Poly Counts

I’m working on creating my first PC game in Unreal, aiming to try to make look like a Vray render, but actually be possible walk around in. I have loads of hi-res assets that I have modelled/sculpted/photoscanned, which I’m in the process of retopologizing and creating lower res versions. I’m trying to figure out what is the best poly count for the various items, but after googling there doesn’t seem to be a consensus, and everyone seems to be only talking about either characters, weapons, or total game poly count.

Out of curiosity, what do others here use for polygon targets for the following:

  1. Landscape (no plants, buildings, etc… just the base terrain)
  2. Medium sized buildings (eg 3-4 bedroom house size that characters can go into)
  3. Objects/Dressing (furniture, appliances, ornaments/objects, etc…)
  4. Characters
  5. Vegetation (trees, shrubs, etc…)

I have no previous experience with this, I work with photo realistic CG, and have never really associated games with something that could look like that till last year when a co-worker show me some things that had been made in Unreal. To say that I was blown away with the detail in the real-time renders is an understatement. I’ve been eager to try and build something myself from scratch and now finally have some time to more than play with the Unreal example scenes.

Any guidance would be much appreciated,

Bex

That’s because there really isn’t a consensus. The biggest limit outright is the hardware the project is intended to run on. The more you have in your scene, the more power you’ll require out of the rig. You might be better suited asking in the ArchViz subforum, as they don’t have quite the same performance concerns as those of us working in gaming that have numerous scripts and AI running in the background as well.

there is no wrong or right. aim for the performance you want to achieve. there are chars that use 15k polys and look good, others use 150k and look good aswell. in the end its a matter of who should play your game (hardware wise). also its a matter of optimization.