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vo polygon count?
so my teacher does 3D modeling and he asked what my game polygon count was out of no where, taking he is bored on what he is doing now and I do talk heavy on vo lol, so anyone knows what the polygon count is for vo or is forbidden knowledge? also I just learned this word today so if I mess up in answering please do tell me and correct me.
"The polygon count for VO" is a question that has no answer, for it would depend upon the scene that you are viewing. A better question might be something like "What is the polygon count of the (ship name) model?" - to which the answer is quite low!
Well the total poly count of the game could easily be looked at as the sum of all 3d meshes at their highest LOD.
Which for vo probably compares to something between quake 3 and half life 2, which is a pretty big ballpark.
Weird question though cause yeah like yoda said its all based on the scene you want to render which brings me to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbdxVQrieYo <--- vo rendering a lot of poly's which managed to bring a HD4890 to its knees at recording 1080p its too low res to actually tell the poly count but you can tell the amount of number places it takes.
I dare say that's probably the most complex vo scene rendered and recorded to date!
Which for vo probably compares to something between quake 3 and half life 2, which is a pretty big ballpark.
Weird question though cause yeah like yoda said its all based on the scene you want to render which brings me to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbdxVQrieYo <--- vo rendering a lot of poly's which managed to bring a HD4890 to its knees at recording 1080p its too low res to actually tell the poly count but you can tell the amount of number places it takes.
I dare say that's probably the most complex vo scene rendered and recorded to date!
type /fps
The scene polygon count differs substantially between PC and mobile, for instance (although, more importantly, the number and complexity of shaders differs even more).
Also, the scale of the asset is a big thing. If you make something "huge", it's a lot harder to get away with a lower poly count. We have object LODs and such, which reduce detail with distance, but even so your "close-up" really benefits from being higher poly if the object is larger. Like I think the Capella is around 15k polygons.
Similarly, with very small objects, it spends a lot of time on-screen in the distance, meaning the LOD can be used very efficiently. So while a newer fighter ship might be 4000-5000 polygons, at most "visual" ranges it's probably only 500, or 1000, because it's "off in the distance" and you can't really tell. When it's up close, or spinning in your Ship menu, it's at the full detail. So small objects can sometimes be a bit higher-poly for "free". But we still have to be careful, due to the big scale of devices we support, and that there is the potential for large numbers of people / NPCs in the same area (battles, skirmishes, etc).
We also have different technologies for polygon reduction, dating from different eras. When the game first went online in 2002, we added the "bone" bumpy asteroids, and those were exported from models that were around 30k-50k polygons apiece (in 2002!). We cut that down a bit at export time, but they were still many thousands of polygons. Then the engine does real-time poly reduction (LOD bias), that reduces it even further based on your distance from the object. But still, for a long time you could turn up all the polygon settings, fly into a scene with a lot of Progressive Mesh asteroids, and have your computer be crushed by the result.
These days, realtime polygon reduction, like progressive meshing, is not as efficient as static meshes using instancing, so we've migrated to the latter. We've actually re-exported a lot of the old dynamic meshes as static ones, and will likely be continuing to do so.. you can have a higher average polygon count on screen with instanced static meshes, versus a lot of unique dynamic meshes.
Also, the scale of the asset is a big thing. If you make something "huge", it's a lot harder to get away with a lower poly count. We have object LODs and such, which reduce detail with distance, but even so your "close-up" really benefits from being higher poly if the object is larger. Like I think the Capella is around 15k polygons.
Similarly, with very small objects, it spends a lot of time on-screen in the distance, meaning the LOD can be used very efficiently. So while a newer fighter ship might be 4000-5000 polygons, at most "visual" ranges it's probably only 500, or 1000, because it's "off in the distance" and you can't really tell. When it's up close, or spinning in your Ship menu, it's at the full detail. So small objects can sometimes be a bit higher-poly for "free". But we still have to be careful, due to the big scale of devices we support, and that there is the potential for large numbers of people / NPCs in the same area (battles, skirmishes, etc).
We also have different technologies for polygon reduction, dating from different eras. When the game first went online in 2002, we added the "bone" bumpy asteroids, and those were exported from models that were around 30k-50k polygons apiece (in 2002!). We cut that down a bit at export time, but they were still many thousands of polygons. Then the engine does real-time poly reduction (LOD bias), that reduces it even further based on your distance from the object. But still, for a long time you could turn up all the polygon settings, fly into a scene with a lot of Progressive Mesh asteroids, and have your computer be crushed by the result.
These days, realtime polygon reduction, like progressive meshing, is not as efficient as static meshes using instancing, so we've migrated to the latter. We've actually re-exported a lot of the old dynamic meshes as static ones, and will likely be continuing to do so.. you can have a higher average polygon count on screen with instanced static meshes, versus a lot of unique dynamic meshes.
ok, and sorry for the odd question my teacher was pestering me on the game polygon count because he was asking me if he could somehow design a ship for vo, I will give him the news on this info that I sorta understand to him on Monday.
Sticky in the General forum pertaining to creating content for VO.
https://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/24704
https://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/24704