Polycount for Current Gen Games

[arthurduque]

I have some doubts about the amount of polygons supported by new video games (PS3, XBOX360etc ..)
HOW MANY Polygon are used, on average for:
Main character =?
Main weapon =
Secondary Weapon =
Secondary Characters =
Enemies =
Vehicles =
Scenarios = land, houses and other objects from scene
In the scene, how many lights can be used? properties that they have?
obs.
the scenarios are divided into parts? as is done this division)
Maps that the engines behave = Diffuse, Specular, Self Illumination, opacity, bump, normal map, and?

Thank you

[Pankake]

You're going to get loads of answers of varying polygons and statistics, my advice to you is to pick out the engine you're interested in developing for, and read the documentation, which will cover all of this.

[Cryrid]

The age old answer is 'it depends'.

Are there going to be hundreds of characters/objects on the screen at once such as with a RTS or MMO, or will there only be two characters one the screen at once such as a fighting game? Is the main weapon going to be seen from a distance, or held right up to the camera such as in a FPS? The list of considerations go on, so I'd stick with Pankake's advice.

[Talon]

How many polygons in a piece of string? (thanks, Rick).

There is no real answer to this often asked question without you being incredibly specific and at that point you'll have answered the question yourself. (And, really, some quick searching/google would probably have pulled up the tons of threads asking the same question and told you exactly that, you might want to try looking for answers before asking questions in future).

You could always just try simply looking at the models that come with games and the documentation that comes with their editors. Nearly all of the major titles come with editors and SDKs that allow you to open and view all of the existing game content.

[nfollmer]

42, The answer is always 42........

No seriously, everyone else answered your question so I won't repeat them

Let me give you some guidelines with Gears Of War:

From what I can remember, the main characters were around 12 to 15k

Guns: 3 to 6k

Buildings: Put together in sections, so really no way to tell.


That probably doesn't help you at all, but it's the best I have

[Cryrid]

I'm not sure how accurate this list is, but I've had it sitting in my documents for a while:

Gears of War, Xbox 360, 2006 (according to D’Artiste book)
Wretch - 10,000 polygons with diffuse, specular and normal maps
Boomer - 11,000 polygons with diffuse, specular and normal maps
Marcus - 15,000 polygons with diffuse, specular and normal maps

GTA San Andreas, PS2, 2004
Characters - 2,000 polygons with 1 256×256 8bit texture
NPCs - 1,200 polygons with 1 256×128 8bit texture

Half-Life, PC, 1998
Zombie - 844 polygons
High Definition pack Zombie- 1700 polygons

Halflife 2, PC, 2004
Alyx Vance - 8323 polygons
Barney - 5922 polygons
Combine Soldier - 4682 polygons
Buggy (without mounted gun) - 5824 polygons
Classic Headcrab - 1690 polygons
SMG - 2854 polygons (with arms)
Pistol - 2268 polygons (with arms)

Halo, Xbox, 2001
Masterchief - 2,000 polygons

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, GC, 2002
Link - 2800 polygons

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, GC/Wii, 2006
Link - 6900 polygons

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, PS2, 2005
Snake - 4,000 polygons

Project Gotham Racing 2, Xbox, 2003
Vehicles - 10,000 polygons

Project Gotham Racing 3, Xbox 360, 2006
Vehicles - 80,000-100,000 polygons

Quake, PC, 1996
200 polygons with 1 320×200 8bit texture using predefined palette.

Quake 4, PC, 2006
Player model - 2,500 polygons with multiple diffuse, specular and normal maps

Resident Evil 4, Gamecube, 2005
Leon - 10,000 polygons

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, PS3, 2007
Main characters - ~20,000-30,000 polygons
Drake - ~30,000 polygons
Pirates - ~12,000-15,000 polygons

Unreal Tournament, PC, 1999
Player model - 800 polygons

Unreal Tournament 2k3, PC, 2003
Player model - 3,000 polygons

Unreal Tournament 3, PC, 2007
Weapon models - 4,500 to 12,000 triangles for the first person view

[arthurduque]

Thanks for the help guys!

I know that this varies widely quantity of polygons, as the dynamics of each game, but what I wanted was to take a north (for the following query modeling, thinking of shooting even in games like "Call of Duty 4", "Gears of war ")

Then think of a generic form and surface ...

The main characters = 10,000 to 15,000 Tris

Secondary characters = 8000 to 10,000 Tris

Enemies = 10,000 tris or down

Weapons = 2000 to 5000 Tris

And buildings and structures, scenarios in general? (No idea! ... EHEH rs)

I make models with averages of triangles similar to these, I think that being too out of the current scenario of games?!

And Cryrid = Tanks for your Spent time !

[aphexx]

Hi, for our project its like this:
currently we are working on an open world 3rd person roleplaying game. nearly all chars have 6k-8k tris. The monster polycount differ from the monsters size.

So the more polys are permanent to see and are in memory, the less, each entity can have or you reduce the number of entitys, and give them few ones a higher polycount.

always have an eye on your memory consumption.

in console buisness, memory is more crucial than rendered polycount.
means, when you have very much textures in one scene, you should have a look on your vertexcount in order to not blast your memory limit.

if you are coming over you memory limit, consoles are not that friendly as computers are. the good ol pc will then swap the memoryload..a console would certainly crash or do other things you do not want to happen.

normal maps are not that compressed like diffuse maps.
so i heard a 512*512 normalmap takes as much memory as ~2400polys (i didnt prove this information)
so it could happen, that you sometimes want to model things more detailed, than using a normal map.

[Ghostscape]

Originally Posted by aphexx

Hi, for our project its like this:
currently we are working on an open world 3rd person roleplaying game. nearly all chars have 6k-8k tris. The monster polycount differ from the monsters size.

So the more polys are permanent to see and are in memory, the less, each entity can have or you reduce the number of entitys, and give them few ones a higher polycount.

always have an eye on your memory consumption.

in console buisness, memory is more crucial than rendered polycount.
means, when you have very much textures in one scene, you should have a look on your vertexcount in order to not blast your memory limit.

if you are coming over you memory limit, consoles are not that friendly as computers are. the good ol pc will then swap the memoryload..a console would certainly crash or do other things you do not want to happen.

normal maps are not that compressed like diffuse maps.
so i heard a 512*512 normalmap takes as much memory as ~2400polys (i didnt prove this information)
so it could happen, that you sometimes want to model things more detailed, than using a normal map.

Your vertcount is nowhere near as important as your texture size when managing memory. The PS3's split memory architecture means your verts are going on CPU memory and the textures are going on GPU memory (whereas on the 360 they're all just eating from the same pool), so balancing memory may require reducing vertcount if you're on the PS3, but by and large you're going to have issues with your texture size.

A lot of people still hold on to this notion that vert count is incredibly critical, and they'll wind up texturing a 1k triangle model with a 2kx2k mapset, which is totally wrong.

[aphexx]

now that sounds well founded!
nevertheless the FPS is still also to be observed.
but it is mostly not the mass of vertecies that causes fps to collaps, in fact it is a very small amount of performance this needs.
it is the sum of all vertecies being rendered, all texture switches, every entity so everything that produces drawcalls. but also navigation, scripts, ai, shader instructions , animations and what not.

if you want to see, what effect your character has in your engine, you can import him into some level only as a part of a levelmesh or something and see, what you fps is doing. when you do not see any difference, clone them that often, that your FPS is collapsing some frames.
then you import him and link the properties to him, that make him a character. a full NPC with all systems running. also the same amount.
i think you'll see great difference.