how low is low?

[lamer_T]

whe people talk about low poly for games how low is low??

how many polys for say a GTA:VC car or character?
http://news.gameplay.co.uk/images/vice2.jpg http://www.vice-city.com/Vice-City-Hummer-H2.jpg

an MOH character?
http://eur.i1.yimg.com/eur.yimg.com/i/de/sh/sp/brown.jpg

QuakeIII/Jedi Knight ect models?
http://www2.ravensoft.com/jedioutcast/images/jedibanner.jpg

fnarr for now,

[SniperMaster]

b4 you post stuff like this, search back. there was a topic about this not that long ago.

[lamer_T]

oops

[MR. BROWN]

it appears dead in this part of the forum....so lamer_T go ahead and ask these kind of questions......at least it will get these old threads circulated out.....whats that smell..........stale air?

brown

[Crawling Chaos]

It depends on the game itself, GTA:VC will require a lot lower polycounts than UT2k3.

I think VC would be maybe 1000 at the most for people, where as in UT2k3 2000-3500 is standard, 3500 is getting high.

Go on fansites of the games to find out what the polycount should be.

Remember too that games handles polies in tri's, do not make models using quads, or if you do make sure that the polycount is half of what you want it to be as it will be doubled when converted to tri's.

[Trappist Funk]

I've been working on some Mooks for my portfolio - the picture here is about 900 polys (please excuse the non-textured hands and the lack of a head as yet. Oh, and the illustrative guns...:o )

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~enztg2/mook2.jpg

In my opinion low is as low as you can get it - I'm aiming for around 1200 or so for this kind of guy (generic bad guy), but his bosses are going to probably approach 2000 or so.

The bar is getting raised all the time as technology improves, so take a look around and see what you can find that you think is similar to what you want to do. My concept is a game with similar detail to Vice City, which is why I'm sticking to 1000ish. If you're doing stuff for practice, set yourself a limit and stick to it. You can always add detail later after all. Try and get the model looking good and move as much detail as possible into the texturing.

[lamer_T]

i was at work today thinking about this, what do people think will be gameabley low in 4-5 years:D ie when i'm ready to revoloutionize the way the world sees video games:roll: :halo:

T

[Trappist Funk]

This thread keeps on reminding me of an online lecture on www.gamasutra.com - given by a guy at the GDC last year (I think).

It was to do with how we've hit a kind of watershed and now graphics have reached a point were enormous improvements aren't possible (in that things look 'real' already, and further enhancements won't be as major as the transition from flat bitmaps to polygons etc) and in future games will live or die on their content.

You should track it down and watch it - I found it quite interesting (even though the guy does repeat his points too much).

Personally I agree with him - I don't think that games will fly off the shelves based solely on their graphics any more.

As for what I think they'll be like in the next few years - who knows? High and Low polygon modelling are different skills and I would think that the benchmarks for both are just going to get better. I'm not that worried though - as the technology improves I'm going to improve in line with it. However it might be more difficult to get into game graphics in future if the 'lowest quality' graphics are far better than what we see today. Look at web design, for example. A few years ago anybody could do it - all you needed was notepad and a basic grasp of Photoshop and HTML. Now it's become more and more complex until it's all pretty incomprehensible.

Anyway, I've started rambling and my point is getting muddied. Hope you can figure out what I was trying to say!

[X5.]

high and low poly skills may be different ... but with the new engine u will need both so u can do 'normal mapping'

[Trappist Funk]

That's kind of what I mean - in a few years those of us doing low polygon stuff will be doing what the high poly guys aer doing at the moment, and the high poly guys will be doing stuff that looks even better.

We'll still be low and high polygon artists, but the exact definition of 'low' will have grown by a few thousand polys (or more!)

[FutureMan]

I read an interesting article by a game industry worker and he basically says not to worry about sticking to the lower end limits.
http://www.polyfarmer.com/Tutorials/entryartists.htm
Mainly because by the time you have a job the limits will be much higher. So really everyone should be working on the 3500 tri models not the 1000 ones. However there probably will always be a need for background "extras" that don't need to be higher poly at all.

[Incitatus]

Half life 2 will have game characters with 7500 polies

[Solidarity]

with a little luck games might actually start being good if graphics ever reach a level where they don't need as much improving... But I think they'll come up with more ways to make the game-world more realistic... and then games will keep on having crummy storylines for lord knows how much longer.

[SniperMaster]

i think they're also gonna be able to up the needed specs for no reason.

[Torlok2002]

i PERSONALLy think that games will always be pushign the limit on our hardware. Face it, Games are what push tghe hardware limit, they are what forces Nvidia, Intel.......etc... to make bigger and better (and sometimes louder). otherwise most of these hardware companies would loose big money just because people arent buying top of the line stuff for rediculous amounts of money.

(btw i hate kids who get any amount of money for a PC from their daddies [ i know a kid who bought a $6,000 desktop, and he's in college, what in gods name do you need a $6,000 desktop for, ill telkl yuo what, so he can play games, yeah real educational!])

anyways back to the subject, i think the next big movement in gaming will be either a new "dimension" to the game. ie: the games wont just be somethign you come home and play, it will become a part of your day, just liek work or school, you cannot pause the game, (although there would need to be settings so you could work and go to school....etc...)

or

Soemthign more than a mouse and keyboard. I always thougt it would rock to hok up several of those "ab belts" to a Pc and have them set to shock at different strengths for different kinds of hits and in different places to match the damage being done to your character. (you get shot in the leg....yo cannot move you leg for real for a while, and it hurts...) this would add a new "dimension" to the game in a sense, now you are using not only sight, hearing, but also feeling.)

I also think games really lack in sound quality. Soem games are good, but not most in my experience. And of course i suspect theat they will create new "cooler" genres of games....


Just my humble opinions and bad typings......