Hi, I have been trying to find out how low the polygon count of a character can go so that it is still recognizable as ... a character (i.e. human, monster). i was trying to find out the polycount for typical models in quake, quake2, warcraft 3, and possibly whether its possible to go lower. I am interested in embedded devices, that have a small screen anyway - but they are also sloow. I cant probably show more than around 30 polys for a character, meaning that they should not have much more than around 60 altogether. I dont wanna bug anybody with a question that has been asked before, but its so hard to find information due to the high poly hype. greetz anton ps: does anybody know a place where i can find really low polygon models?

*Shrug* Open a 3d modelling tool and see what you can come up with. ~30 poly models aren't hard to do. [wink]

Or just look at ooooold 3d games. The original Alone In The Dark comes to mind.

That's 56 polygons.

I led a Rome: Total War mod for over a year, and did no less than 50-60 characters AND 3 LoD models for each character, usually the hi-res was 600-800 polies and the lo res was 110-180. Any lower than 100 is not worth it... how about using 2d graphics, or something highly stylized (IE Darwinia)? A 60 poly limit, without a detailed texture (as the RTW soldiers had, 256x256), is going to yield you graphics probably 1/3 as pretty as FF7.

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Original post by Spoonbender *Shrug* Open a 3d modelling tool and see what you can come up with. ~30 poly models aren't hard to do. [wink] Or just look at ooooold 3d games. The original Alone In The Dark comes to mind.

yeah.. 3d modelling - i am incapable of that... ;)
I really would like to look into older games, but i cant seem to find information on their polycounts, and i cant find models. I noticed warcraft III uses pretty low polygon models pretty nicely, I wonder how they did things.

...edit
Nice model there, Professor Weed :D. I dont see how this are 56 polys; I think thats the triangle count.. I mean it looks like less cuz I started counting surfaces. I am actually allowed to use quads, so that might 'boast' up the triangle count to around 100 (as long as most pairs of triangles are in one plane).
I am not too concerned about prettyness at this point, I just wonder whether its doable. and high texture resoution on a 2.5" screen don't matter

this is a very odd question... mainly since it can go as low as you want, you could have a plane with a alpha test texture of a character on it if you wanted, and that would be 1 poly.
the lowest i have seen 3d characters go is with the walk around characters in final fantasy 7... although there are prbably lower poly ones out there though.

Hey, my birthday is on April 20th, I don't do that stuff anymore.

Rome: Total War probably uses the lowest-poly count of current PC games... mainly because you can have upwards of 10k onscreen on a highend system.

About polies/quads/tris. All that matters is the tri count (faces). Your rendering engine eventually will break everything down into triangles. EVERY rendering engine does that (some renderers like mental ray (not sure about game engines) use quads, but ultimately they are just two triangles). Otherwise, you could just use a bunch of n-gons, creating a low poly, high triangle figure.

The FFVII town/world map characters are at least a couple hundred polygons each, and probably a 64x64 texture. If I could get a really close screenshot I could say exactly how much... but by counting faces on the battle models, those are probably near 1000.

What devices exactly are you working on? I could find similar apps and give some better estimates.

well, i got this crazy idea (i was sober) that a 3d model can by done on the game boy advance using 2d sprites. Using orthogonal rendering i just need to rotate and scale and translate and apply some parallelogram shifting (whatever thats called). so yeah, I can have any shape that fits into a square (which includes a triangle, or a 4 sided polygon), where of course each polygon edge that is not aligned with the texture edge introduces some small artifacts.
so i can use 32 rotated/scaled textures per frame, and with some asm hacking can that bring up to maximal 128 (still only 32 per scanline then).
Oh yeah, the whole thing is happening on a 2.5" 240x160 screen, so quality is not the primary issue.
so can anybody give me some idea where i can find model(s) within these limits, or give me such, in some reasonable format.
oh, yeah, a 1 polygon model is called a sprite, and its 2d
thx

anton
ps - many software rederers actually render convex n-sided polygons as oppossed to triangles

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Original post by Ant6n oh, yeah, a 1 polygon model is called a sprite, and its 2d ps - many software rederers actually render convex n-sided polygons as oppossed to triangles

lol, yeah, you're right about that. but it can be considered 3d depending on its use.
and you should be able to get someone to help you out with these models in the help wanted section (read the help wanted sticky threads before posting though).

Just to give you some bearing, I did what prof420 did, but doubled the poly count to 120 and tried my best. Its not pretty, but I think its representative of what you will get asking for a poly count higher than your current estimate.



Good luck with your game,
Slowpid

I read an interesting chapter in an old 3D modeling book once that covered this sort of thing. They showed an example of reducing a simple chair from 72 faces to just 28 while still keeping the general shape. In another example of an attempt at a minimum-poly figure, the goal was to get a reasonable human shape with less than 100 polygons. They managed to get the body with 83 and the head with 20. Slightly over budget. This figure did not include hands or feet and was just barely recognizable as humanoid. Just barely.