Polygon/Verts limits?

[Assifuah 1]

Hey there, I'm getting started on addon making for ARMA and I'm hoping to start with ARMA 3 as I'm also doing this for my college assignment. I've decided to model a specific weapon (rifle).

I've searched around and saw on a post that Oxygen will only read up to 16K Verts (or I think it was poly's, can't find the post again).

Could someone confirm or give me a tip as to how many polys I should aim for on this model? I'm making a high poly version for my college assignment (around 60K) and I want to make a lower poly depending on how many the limit is for putting it into ARMA 3.

Thank you!:D

[Messiah 2]

Well, we only have A2 standards to go on so far, and its all very dependant on the rifle itself (i.e. how complicated is it). Normally we'd say around 6-7k for a rifle, but that all changes depending on its complexity and rarity (i.e. is it something like an M4 where you'd conceivably have a lot of people using it in the same scene, and therefore would be a little prudent to try and keep it reasonable, or is it a 50 cal barret, where a) it's not used that much and b) it's not seen/rendered by a lot of people by the nature of what and where it is)

that may have all changes come A3, but looking at the models I doubt it, all that's changes is that the optics and attachments are modeled seperately, so the number of faces for base weapon may in fact be lower by proxy.

[Assifuah 1]

At the moment I have the front portion and I'm on 6K, everything further from the receiver isn't modelled yet. But yes it's an M4 variant, but it would only be used by around 6-10 people on multiplayer (or even just me for a while, I consider this my baby :p). Looking at the weapon models in A3 I'd say they look slightly higher than the A2 custom addons but then again I'm a noob at this so my eyes probably deceive me.

Thanks for the info!

[Vespa 1]

I think the engine will load around 19000 triangles on one model tops

[Assifuah 1]

Ah awesome, I'll try to hover around 10K and if needs be lower it.

Thanks!

[da12thMonkey 1943]

I think the engine will load around 19000 triangles on one model tops

You also gave me this advise w/r/t modelling weapons for Arma 3 a while ago, which is useful in the context of this thread:

About mesh detail in 1st person lod - I usually tell the artists to focus on most visible parts, and do them detailed as much as possible. Parts which aren't visible (right side of the weapon, handgrips, buttstock) dont deserve much detail.

You can tell the detail from screenshots, bacially optics cylinder should have as many triangles to not appear edgy.**

I think typical rifle has about 10000 triangles - not the limit, but if you are effective, it is more than enough.

Textures are 2048 usually - but again, very important to be smart with mapping and texel. Do ironsights huge in unwrap, but buttstock or barrel can use much smaller texture area without looking bad

**From what I've tried to count on the models in the alpha, things like the HAMR sight have a main eyepiece normally of around 30/32-ish sides in the pilot LOD

[scubaman3D 0]

I dunno - I've personally put 20k+ triangle models in A2 so unless they cut this number back, you should be able to make out in the 20k range.

However, I would say that's probably way, way more polys than you'd practically need for a weapon (and this is coming from a notorious poly whore as vespa would tell you :p ).

[Messiah 2]

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should :)

[max power 21]

I dunno - I've personally put 20k+ triangle models in A2 so unless they cut this number back, you should be able to make out in the 20k range.

However, I would say that's probably way, way more polys than you'd practically need for a weapon (and this is coming from a notorious poly whore as vespa would tell you :p ).

I have a couple of pretty high models working alright as well. I think the theory is that the limit people are bumping up against in A2 is the directx 9 vertex normal limit (because you can have more than one normal per vertex). When you hit that limit in terms of number of triangles would depend on how many edges are hard shaded. From what I hear, most hard surface models hit it at around 20k but I think you could go up to 65535 vertices with 1 normal per vertex. I think directx 11 has a 32 bit vertex normal buffer so that should translate into an effectively limitless number of vertex normals. If there is a hard poly limit, I think it would be something in BI's software.

[PuFu 4600]

I have a couple of pretty high models working alright as well. I think the theory is that the limit people are bumping up against in A2 is the directx 9 vertex normal limit (because you can have more than one normal per vertex). When you hit that limit in terms of number of triangles would depend on how many edges are hard shaded. From what I hear, most hard surface models hit it at around 20k but I think you could go up to 65535 vertices with 1 normal per vertex. I think directx 11 has a 32 bit vertex normal buffer so that should translate into an effectively limitless number of vertex normals. If there is a hard poly limit, I think it would be something in BI's software.

Max, for dx9, the limit is 2^15 = 32768 and not 2^16 (65535).

For dx11 you are right, but it seems there is hard limit in the RV engine anyways, which seems to be 2^15. Since there is no updated BI Tools out there yet, i can't really tell if the limit is in O2, or in the RV engine (i will assume it is still the RV).

[max power 21]

I read somewhere that it's 15 or 16 bit but I don't really know what that means. I assume it means it went up at some point.

[Assifuah 1]

Ah sweet, thanks for the replies. I imported my model into O2 and it's rougly 22K polys, seemed to work fine and didn't get any errors. I just need to learn to texture and config the damn thing now lol.