Model polycounts

[IDF-Godzilla 0]

Hi, I'm looking for some info about the model polycounts the game can handle, anyone can guide me to a good source of information regarding this?

[Guest RKSL-Rock]

Hi, I'm looking for some info about the model polycounts the game can handle, anyone can guide me to a good source of information regarding this?

I dont think there has been an "official" suggestions but im aiming for, as usual, as low as possible... but most likely between 6-10,000 polys.

I've heard rumours of 12k but ive not seen any proof.  But with the new engine, normal maps etc around 7500 polys should be more than enough for a good 'fast' gameplay.

[Blackbuck 9]

hmm 12k would seem appropriate for a newer game dont you think but again going ALAP with polys sounds a good idea we'll have to wait for some hard facts.

[MehMan 0]

12k polies? For what? Vehicles? Perhaps. Jeez, I don't see a reason why you'd need 12k polies anywhere. I see 5k polies as more than enough for most things.

But well, as RockofSL said, as low as possible is the best. However finding a nice balance between detail and low polycount is a bit of work.

[adumb 0]

Its not so much the polycount you need to worry about, its the amount of textures you have... in ArmA you will have color, specular, normal, alpha, diffuse, etc. all being rendered at the same time.

[xnodunitx 0]

Yeap,textures are now moreso 3 for 1,I don't know what the face count allowed in AA is but if its like OFP then its higher then 10 and probably 12,the flying dutchman is currently 10k and it works,only issue is OFP's limit of sharp faces,I hate that ><

[Abs_01 0]

At ONS, we're aiming for a few ranges. Here they are:

Cars, artillery: 4,000 - 6,000

APCs, tanks: 5,000 - 12,000

Infantry: Depends on the BIS units.

Depending on the complexity of the model. Clearly we're hoping it won't hit 12,000, but it's our upper limit.

We're going to worry about the air and naval units afterwards.

Abs

[Messiah 2]

you should also be considering the prevalance of said unit, object, vehicle, weapon on any mission, which will be vastly important in affecting face count.

so called 'hero units' (thanks DM) are ones that are important to the mission (i.e. a certain tank that player will always be driving in) but aren't fielded in any huge number on any given mission... and exmaple would be a Unit model it is fair to say there could be hundreds of them in a mission.... a helicopters, it would be hard to justify more than, say, 10 in one air space...

this should be considered in calculating polly count. Remember with all the new texturing goodies like normal map, this should actually cut down the need for extra pollys for details.

[xnodunitx 0]

Yeap,the joys of making 2D texture parts appear 3D..ah what a wonder normal mapping is..here is how I would prioritize what would get a higher polycount,going from lowest to highest.

Weapons

Infantry

Cars (lighter vehicles

APC's

Tanks

Mounted weapons

Transport helicopters

Attack helicopters

Transport planes

Attack planes

Single unit types

[Messiah 2]

its not quite that easy though as there are other factors to consider....

lets take for example a Land Rover with a weapons mount kit (WMIK, as seen with the british army) - My current model (before slaving stuff off) is topping 6k with just the basic model, no kit hung on the side etc etc.

now, my AS90 model (which you would say is higher on the list) is topping 4k, and that was with me trying to make it high detail.

The reasoning? With vehicles, you are forces to model a portion of the interior as viewed from the outside. Granted not to as a detail as the interior, but armour has the advantage of 'hiding' 90% of its interior from ever being seen from the outside.... hence I find that I'll typically have at least 1-2k less when modeling those types of vehicles.

I think it comes down to the individual addon maker as to what generally tops his polly count with what type of unit... fair to say the old rule still applys that the lower the polly count the better... even with arma's new shiny engne and the newer modern rigs that are playing it, 12k is still 12k... and 30 tanks at 12k is utterly OTT

obviously much of what we're discussing is pure educated speculation given what we know from OFP and what we've learnt about Arma - till we have the deffinate figures for the arma models, and lets recall that the BIS M1A1 was only 1500 pollys at its highest LOD in OFP, and BIS are rather good at low polly modeling, then we cant be exactly sure...

sticking to the old set of polly counts should suffice, given normal maps and the such adding that extra detail.

[feersum.endjinn 6]

With normal mapping 5k should be upper limit for most models unless you're modeling extremely large object (like ship). But as usual more important than poly counts is having proper LODs.

[Ian Malcolm 0]

only issue is OFP's limit of sharp faces,I hate that ><

What do you mean by this? I don't know about such "limit"...

[xnodunitx 0]

I'v only discovered it recently when I was working on the updated Fzlongbow,whenever I had the interior and exterior faces sharp and smooth as they would be in reality,I got an odd graphic bug,the game would stutter a bit and parts would warp every second. I smoothed the interior and that stopped. At first I was skeptical of this,however after trying the Flying Dutchman ingame,it seems that is the problem,a single unit can apparently have only so many sharp edges before the game goes haywire,and it only happens when that unit is in your FOV.

At first I thought this was due to facecount limit,however the updated longbow even with all its updated details,has a lower face count then the originals.

[Ian Malcolm 0]

A single unit can apparently have only so many sharp edges before the game goes haywire,and it only happens when that unit is in your FOV.

Well... i can't be sure without actually seeing your model, but i had no problems whatsoever, even with VERY hi poly objects (about 20.000 tris) with proper smoothgroups and never noticed anything like this. So i would be suspecting problem somewhere else.

[feersum.endjinn 6]

Sharp edges cause vertexes to be duplicated because in Direct3D internally lighting normals are per vertex and not per face and rendering sharp edge requires two vertex normals that point at differing directions.

[Ian Malcolm 0]

Sharp edges cause vertexes to be duplicated because in Direct3D internally lighting normals are per vertex and not per face and rendering sharp edge requires two vertex normals that point at differing directions.

Ah. So vertex limit. It would be good to know, if those limits are same for ArmA, but i think those will be way higher.

[xnodunitx 0]

Oh well thats not really a good thing...I'll go into O2 later and make a simple sphere and see how many vertexes it takes before the game goes haywire.

[feersum.endjinn 6]

Ah. So vertex limit. It would be good to know, if those limits are same for ArmA, but i think those will be way higher.

Limit is set by hardware, not ArmA so those values will be different for each graphics adapter.

[metalchris 0]

Mounted weapons eat up alot of polys, because they should be detailed as you will have them in front of you all the time

*Pure Speculation*

So most tanks should have about 4-6K faces

Large Helicopters like the CH53 oder Seaking might even have 7-8K faces.

Characters should be around 4000 , at least thats my estimation.Could be higher though , because faces and hands are quite detailed.

*/Pure Specualtion*

But feersum is right , proper LODs and fewer (or smaller) textures are much better for the performance than saving polygons.

[Ian Malcolm 0]

Just asked and got this reply: Abrams has in first LOD about 6600 vertices and 11400 faces (tris).

[feersum.endjinn 6]

fewer (or smaller) textures are much better for the performance than saving polygons.

Ideally object should only use one big texture for external textures (+ normal + specular maps), state changes are pretty expensive operations. In worst case switching texture alone might take as much time as rendering object with 5k faces.

[Abs_01 0]

Remember with all the new texturing goodies like normal map, this should actually cut down the need for extra pollys for details.

I agree with all the points in your post. I'd like your opinion though, just because I'm pretty new at all this (I've only made about 4 models), what do you think of King Homer's tank, and about how ArmA will handle it? I've heard that they're sitting at about 16,000 verts, and 8,000 faces. In your opinion, is that way too much?

Ideally object should only use one big texture for external textures (+ normal + specular maps), state changes are pretty expensive operations.

Again, ideally speaking, how large do you think this texture should be?

I'm liking this discussion. I'm learning a lot. Thanks guys.

Abs

[Messiah 2]

Mounted weapons eat up alot of polys, because they should be detailed as you will have them in front of you all the time

I was under the impression, or at least I had heard on some grapevines, that weapons (such as 50 cals, GL's etc) were now handeled as proxies... granted its the same amount of pollys being rendered at the end of the day, but at least in O2 you remove the 500 faces or so a mounted weapon can take up

[dm 9]

Ideally object should only use one big texture for external textures (+ normal + specular maps), state changes are pretty expensive operations.

Again, ideally speaking, how large do you think this texture should be?

2048 x 2048, which is a harware limitation caused by ATI.

[Abs_01 0]

Mounted weapons eat up alot of polys, because they should be detailed as you will have them in front of you all the time

Isn't this only applicable to things like gunner proxy, etc? If so, then it's not that bad, since you can remove other parts of the vehicle to make up for the higher detail of the gun.

In the first LOD, though, it doesn't have to be as high detail, IMHO.

Abs

EDIT: Thanks DM.