A reasonable poly count for Skyrim models?

[Matth85]

I've done several game environments.

And you question what a scene is?.. o.O

 

the in game Parthunnax model is 15653 polygons. if that helps at all

He is the focus of the scene.

He is a creature, a character.

He is big.

 

Pretty much why he got the polycount he does.

[Ghogiel]

I've done several game environments.

And you question what a scene is?.. o.O

 

I'm not questioning what a scene is. You just felt the need to explain that a castle isn't a model, unless it's a model, and not at the same time when it's a scene, in which case, it's a scene. See understand you perfectly.

[Matth85]

Now you're just making it confusing.

 

What if the castle is one model, not including doors?

 

Is what i refered too. Which, as writen now, means you question what it is. If that was not your meaning, I apologize.

But I never "Felt the need to explain". The sentence given to me told me you did not know, so I had to explain it to get my point over.

 

Now you've managed to confuse me :confused:

 

Unless you misunderstood what I meant by "A castle is a scene, not a model. Each piece is a model, or a piece of a tile." -- where I meant a castle is not a single-piece model but a scene, so it goes under scene-poly-restriction, not model-scene-retriction.

[Ghogiel]

Now you're just making it confusing.

 

What if the castle is one model, not including doors?

 

Is what i refered too. Which, as writen now, means you question what it is. If that was not your meaning, I apologize.

But I never "Felt the need to explain". The sentence given to me told me you did not know, so I had to explain it to get my point over.

 

Now you've managed to confuse me :confused:

 

You're taking it out context, this is the proper quote:

 

Now you're just making it confusing.

 

What if the castle is one model, not including doors? :tongue:

[Matth85]

You're taking it out context, this is the proper quote:

I apologize, but I never take smileys. They are overused today, and does nothing but annoy me. I gridn my teeth when I see the ":DDDDDD" in a text message. Eugh. The meaning of the sentence is the same, but a smiley in the end. If that smiley meant something like "THIS IS IRONIC!" or something, I see your point. However, a big smile doesn't really yell out to me "funnayh man, funnayh!".

That's me though.

 

But, I guess we got our points up and going. I believe it's time to resume to the original posters problem. If only we could get to see the model.

 

I apogize for it then.

[jimhsu]

You're taking it out context, this is the proper quote:

I apologize, but I never take smileys. They are overused today, and does nothing but annoy me. I gridn my teeth when I see the ":DDDDDD" in a text message. Eugh. The meaning of the sentence is the same, but a smiley in the end. If that smiley meant something like "THIS IS IRONIC!" or something, I see your point. However, a big smile doesn't really yell out to me "funnayh man, funnayh!".

That's me though.

 

But, I guess we got our points up and going. I believe it's time to resume to the original posters problem. If only we could get to see the model.

 

I apogize for it then.

 

The "/s" tag is your friend. Text-based humor is notoriously hard to appreciate.

 

That said, the poster was obviously clear in his statement of his problem.

 

/s

Edited December 21, 2011 by jimhsu

[Matth85]

That said, the poster was obviously clear in his statement of his problem

.

We don't need the statement, we need something visual. The thing is, we understand he got a model he has not done to a editable mesh or poly, and if he do it becomes 200k polygons. That is sick. So I want to see the model, so I can estimate how many I would use for the model. That way he got something to work with.

 

There is little that can be done if we do not know what we got. I see the problem, I simply can not make a solution without the visual. I can't map out polygons in my head by "Viking ship" "splines" "too many polygons".

[Ghogiel]

Note that splines have a controllable interpolation value. Though it probably won't make much of a difference in making an optimised mesh when you consider that the flat faces will be 'filled in' with a metric ton of useless faces if all you do is 'convert to editable poly' .

 

using splines is all well and good, Nothing wrong there, as long as you know how to build something that you are going to turn into a high poly subD model, or actually use them to create the low poly mesh, which there really isn't any other way but to draw the polygons, you can do so with splines.

[Hagroth]

Is not that you have to make a game but mod it in a way that is satisfactory , eye pleasing and performant , at least this is my way now .... Back in the past when I first started 3d and modded morrowind making the Narsis City , I was not aware of all this stuff and I created very nice polymonsters that summed one upon the other made the game lag for most pc users that didn't had a superpc to run the mod on ...

Just out of curiosity, do you mean the Narsis city in Tamriel Rebuilt?

 

What if the castle is one model, not including doors?

 

Then you would get very low ress texture. But yes, then it would be a model and you'd need about 30k polygons. It would still be a scene though, but also a single model.

 

A castle would be made with tiles, hopefully. That would save time and energy, and use minimally texturing. That would mean a model would have 1 - 500 polygons, and you'd have up to 30 models there. The scene would then have 15 00 polygons in the scene, and probably another 20k from random objects and assets.

 

A scene is what the camera see at any given point. That scene can contain as many models as it wants, it is still a scene. That is how polycount is being decided: How many polygons can the scene take without problems? Then it is up to the artist to choose a polycount per model to go under said limit.

I am not sure what the limit is on todays computers, but I can guess it is high. I also know that you do not need any super poly-model to get a good model. Here is a tileable ground texture I made, it is 1 polygon and tilable. The texture is 1024x1024 and the model is 256x256:

 

http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/3904/floortilequickrender.th.jpg

 

The render you see is 4 polygon, 4 models, and 1 scene. I could have zoomed in and have 1 model in the scene, or tile it over and have 20.

 

And yes, texture size comes in when we talk about lagging. That is why you should never hit the limit for polycount: Since the texture means a lot as well. There is rarely any texture that needs to hit 2048x2048, and most don't need to go over 512x512. I personally render out maps at 2048x2048 and downscale to 1024x1024.

 

Sorry OP for off topiccing your topic! I just want my point across ;)

I would still want a picture of the model before I could judge how many polygons that should have.

No problem! In fact, your post was very informative because I haven't thought about how much textures add to it. Thanks to everyone for a lot of replies! I've come to realize I might just easen down a bit on the steps since the edges don't really need to be knife-sharp. Since this is my first model that I'll make from splines to maps, I've focused too much on the basic form. The textures will probably cover up the slight blurryness that occurs with a lower amount of polygons. I suppose one might not even notice the difference with the maps on.

 

How big a model is in meter is irrelevant. It depends how many polgyons you got, and the toplogy of it. If your ship got a ton of details all over, I could see it hit upwards to 30k polygons. But then the model would be the sole focus point, and majority of a scene.

A good topology would be wise to have.

 

Could you show us the model, so we could estimate how many you would need?

What I meant was that if my model is huge, I could have more polygons because I could still have the same polygon/m^3 ratio, you know? On the other hand, as long as the model doesn't stretch out of the scene or the radius the engine renders, it doesn't matter. 10k polygons will be as heavy on a large object as they would on a small.

I'll upload an image of the entire thing tomorrow, since I don't have the computer I'm using available right now!

[Hagroth]

Here you go: http://imgur.com/XGaPz

 

The upper and lower images to the left show the ship excluding the interior "ribs" and benches etc. which I haven't done yet. The green and purple things in the middle are the mastfish and its upright. To the upper right there's a shot of the spline cage, and in the lower right you can see what it looks like in vertex mode after having converted it to an editable poly. This is at 25 steps on the surface modifier. I now end up at 350827 polys for the gray model.