How many polys does a model typically have?

How many polys does a model typically have?

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ziamor
Posts: 8
Joined: 10 Sep 2006, 04:10

How many polys does a model typically have?

Post by ziamor »

I'm just woundering how many polys a unit in spring can have.
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aegis
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Joined: 11 Jul 2007, 17:47

Re: How many polys does a model typically have?

Post by aegis »

depends on how many of the unit you expect to have walking around
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maackey
Posts: 490
Joined: 02 Jul 2008, 07:11

Re: How many polys does a model typically have?

Post by maackey »

They generally range from a few hundred to a few thousand.

As Aegis said, it depends on how many are out and about at any one time. If you expect to have zillions running/flying around the battlefield, you might want to aim for the smaller end of the spectrum. If the unit would be fairly unique or rare, you can create details that stretch the polygon count into the higher end of the spectrum.

For the spring engine specifically, the choke point on performance isn't really the polygon count. You can have fairly ornate units (1000+ polys) spammed on the map with similar performance of a similar unit simplified.

Generally, the number of units, the number of pieces on the units, animations, anything that uses the CPU, will eventually make the game run slower for the majority of players (ie. the massing of units will have a noticeable effect on performance once enough units are created) but the polygonal detail of the units is not really significant.
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rattle
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Re: How many polys does a model typically have?

Post by rattle »

In most RTS games your typical unit model averages between under 1k and up to 10k, depends on the hardware specs in mind and thus resulting scene budget, i.e. a maximum of 1 million polygons on screen at any time. Also, most games make use of a LOD system which swaps distant models to lower resolution models.
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MR.D
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Joined: 06 Aug 2005, 13:15

Re: How many polys does a model typically have?

Post by MR.D »

Caydr did a test a long time ago, and he found that Spring itself can have a huge poly limit before it actually starts impacting video performance.

The slowdowns in this game are mostly with the pathfinding system and code aspects of the engine.

Reasonably you should try to keep polycounts as low as possible for units that will be the majority ingame and most active in an average game.

Just as a general base, try to keep common units below 1000 triangles or as low as possible.
Special units that will be rarely seen or are limited such as Krogoth/commander/special factories ect below 6000, and you won't have much of an issue in game performance.
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