So im pretty new to ue4, ive been learning how it works for around half a year and i finally feel like im ready to start making a full game (just for a hobby that will last years) but a commen thing i see when watching videos or reading is make sure the polycount isnt to to high or so forth. How many polygons is to much and does it mean for the one mesh or every single mesh within render distance
Modern AAA games have millions of polygons on screen at a time, and have character with triangle counts near one hundred thousand.
Make sure the polycount is being used efficiently. Use the quad overdraw view to make sure geometry isn’t too dense, and if it is, use LODs.
Geometry typically isn’t a bottleneck, unless you’re really throwing around a lot of geometry.
Thank you, its just something that has stumped me recently as i had no clue what to go for
Also keep in mind that the amount of polygons depends on how you light them, the more advanced the light the heavier every polygon is for the render, then theres also collision detection and physics. The less other stuff thats in the processing and rendering cycle the more polygons you can have. And like ZacD said AAA games use millions per screen , If i rember correctly i think gears of war 2 or 3 used 3 million per screen and that was years ago. I think the standard for a character about 7 years ago was around 30k. Snake in the first metal gear solid game for ps3 (was it 3 or 4?) used around one million cause it was a PS3 exclusive so they could code it for specific hardware. Anyway what im trying to say is there are alot of variables involved
so its a very hard question to answer. So i recommend always trying to keep polygon count down as in dont use “unecessary” polygons but you can go pretty high nowadays.
There is also something you can look at, besides LoD, and works like a charm is actor merging. The advantages is that you will end with just one geometry and one set of materials instead of several. The feature have been explained in some Unreal Engine livestream videos on twitch.tv or youtube channels.
