Something i've been meaning to ask for a while, and something I've looked up on google many times, but found very mixed answers ....

When does a low poly mode become a high poly model? ei. what is the upper limit on the number of poly's for a low poly model?

I've done a ton of looking on the internet for an answer to this, but it does seem to depend on personal preference, I've seen people say a low poly model needs to gave a poly count in the hundreds, many say up to 5000, and I've even found a guy who is a well known member of the blender tutorial community, who titles his videos "low poly" then proceeds to produce a subdivided model with 30 to 40k poly's.

I'm assuming the variance i am seeing is a mix of personal preferences, and maybe the end application usage (ie for a game it would be a lower number than for a cg movie etc).

So i guess what the real question here would be is .... What do you guys call low poly? At what point do you the GameGuru community perceive a model as high poly?

I'd like to try to get an average number to aim for when i'm making models for GameGuru, it kind f bugs me that i don't have a set target (that's the ocpd smacking me round the head).

this is something I have been trying to comprehend too, I have been using the theory anything below 1000 is low and 1000 - 5000 medium and anything above 5k as high, this may be wrong in the eyes of a lot of people, things to take into consideration is what the model is going to be used for so I (whether or not this is wrong) low - med for scenery and high for dynamic/interactive models.

A lot of my models seem to be in the med to high bracket, but I am still honing my skills, PBR will make a big difference to poly count simply because of the detail you will be able to paint on the model.

I think 22k is the limit for a single character/entity in GG DX9 but DX11 can handle higher poly models it will depend on whether Lee will cap it or not, unless he has already stated it somewhere, if that's the case ie Lee says max is 50k then there is no reason that 5k could become the new 'Low' poly, some nice models could be made in the 5 - 10k bracket

in fairness I don't think there is a standard for low poly I think its in the eyes of the person making the model he/she knows what they are trying to achieve and if they think it will look better at 2k than 1k then I also think its fine, I always make my models watching the poly count but I don't hold back be it 5k or 10k I know what I am trying to make so I make it look as good as I can, I then look at reducing the model as much as I can removing detail etc.. to reduce the polys, there is a certain point where the model wont look anything like what you started out with so before that happens i stop.

from completing the model to getting it into GG is roughly about 50-60% reduction but I don't over write my models I always save them with a different name so that I have (what I call) a High Definition version and a SD version I have done this just in case what is classed as too high now will become the norm

I always thought it was just the look rather than an actual limit.
I would say it's about achieving the look and keeping the model low at the same time but the limit would depend on the model, some models naturally take more Poly's to complete as I'm sure you know... Unless you're aiming for a mobile release it doesn't really matter much anyway I guess.

@smallg - I agree to a certain degree, the model is what the creator wants it to be only he knows what he wants it to look like does not matter how many polys are used the limit comes into play by the audience the model maker does not know what kind of game his model will be used in all he can do is make it look as good as possible the user needs to decide on whether or not its too high for his level, as a junior model maker I always go for looks first then try to reduce polys I know a lot of people would use a high end model to create a cut scene and a low end for scenery maybe 100's of them but like Belidos says what is classed as low poly? I think its down to what the engine can handle more than anything, so 22k is GG's current limit (HIGH) 11k (MEDIUM) and 5k(LOW) in theory

The 22k limit is for rigged characters, as far as i know the limit for basic entities without bones is around 60k at the moment.

60k really ??? I have never seen that I have always worked on a 22k limit

I think a lot of people now do a lot of the detail with normal map baking. Start of with the high poly and use the normal map from that model on the low poly version.Getting all the detail without all the polys.
Edit. This is interesting
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/yes-but-how-many-polygons-an-artist-blog-entry-with-interesting-numbers.39321/

Dave

Sorry double post

Dave

Granada is right, the best low poly models now use normal maps to look more detailed. The model can look real clunky, but once it has the maps it looks near as good as the original. At least in a 3D package. Up to now I would have thought GG would not work so well with that method. DX11 may improve this though.

I generally make my models as low poly as I can, especially with something that will be duplicated around the level often; those polys add up. As a buyer I try to look for reasonable poly counts. If an item is thousands of polys for no good reason I will not generally buy it. Poly count does make a difference to your games speed, when you start hitting your PC's ceiling things will slow dramatically.

Not sure what the limit is now, but I got this in the other day. Textures don't work but other than that it seemed to import in quite well. I reduced it's polys from about 300k to about 120k, which as you see seems to work. Other attempts resulted in an invisible object so maybe it was too high poly at that point. I would not call this a low poly object though ;p It really depends on the object you are making, a low poly object would be the lowest poly count you can achieve for said object, rather than a specific number range. You should be able to make an orange fairly low poly for instance, having a highly detailed mesh for this would be unnecessary. A Star ship however would need a few more, as you can see, but someone making such an object for a game would probably have been a lot more restrained with the poly count and get a decent look as well.

What is low poly depends on who you ask, and the application you use them in.

Polycount for Game Guru use is as follows.
22k Limit per solid mesh is the limit.
What this means.
Say you are making a vehicle, It is made up of 4 wheels, a chassis, windows, interior.
Each one of these separate meshes can have up to 22k polies per mesh.
You select all meshes and export them out. Total model poly count would be 88k. Obviously not low poly, but Game Guru will render each mesh and have the proper collision and texture coverage.

Same can work with characters, but when weighting the verticies, one must remember that no one verticie can not be influenced by more then 3 bones.
So in theory, You can have each limb be 22k polies, and the body can have up to 22k polies, adding an incredible amount of detail to the character.

Now will Game Guru or any engine like 30 or 40 of these type of detailed meshes in the same area, Probably not to well, as that is a lot of data to process every loop of the engine coding.

The use of a detailed Normal map greatly reduces the number of polygons needed and will reduce your mesh sizes.
Programs like Quixel suite have and excellent process for making detailed normal maps, not sure about substance suit stuff. These are usually generated by baking a high poly model onto a reduced poly model, to get the basics in, and then enhanced by a paint program or a normal detailing program as stated above.

So Low poly model definitions are a lot higher poly count, then models of 10 years ago.
General rule of thumb is to make your models and meshes with the least number of polies you can and for the application you are looking to use them with. If you are going to use this model a lot in your game design, then consider the draw calls that will be used.

When Lee gets instancing into the engine, then duplicate meshes will be used different and more detailed models of them can be used and placed into your game with out extra draw calls.

This model has 66k polies in it, but are all separate meshes exported at the same time. It is also rigged and animated.
Works fine in Game Guru.

I think you are mistaken here, i placed a terrain mesh that i created in Blender into GameGuru on the weekend, it was in the region of 43k and a single mesh, i thought it would crash myself, but it worked fine, just took a bit longer than normal to load into memory.

As to characters working the same and being able to have 22k on each limb, i'm not too sure about that either, Fuse models are multi-object by default, but you try putting one into GameGuru that is over 22k and it crashes blender. but that might be the bones placement as you said, not too sure about that one.



Painting normals from a high poly mesh to a low poly mesh in substance painter is as easy as clicking a button, choosing your mesh, and clicking accept. The bit i just can't work out how to do (at least in blender) is how to crea low and high poly models and have the UV's "match" if you know what i mean, i know you can do it, i just haven't worked out out quite yet.

This might help you out.

https://forum.allegorithmic.com/index.php?topic=2438.0

Dave

Thanks, but that doesn't help at all, the last post gives you a work flow, but not exactly how to do it, the bit i can't work out is how to bake from high to low, the information that link has for that is one line "then you bake the highpoly information into the Lowpoly" and not how I've seen a few tutorials that do it, but for some reason they seem to omit the bit that explains exactly how to do it, they kind of rush through that part and on to the painting, which is frustrating.

What about this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iaZ9MkYYmc

Edit your right ,i have been searching and everybody seems to skip that part

Looks like you only have to uv the low poly model

http://polycount.com/discussion/168379/help-do-i-need-to-unwrap-both-high-poly-and-low-poly-to-bake-the-normal-maps

Dave

I'm looking for a way to do it in Blender, i know it can be done because i've seen it done in tutorials, i just can't find an explanation of how they've done it. I really don't want to have to install any more software because i have so many already lol. I'm sure there's a tutorial video that explains it somewhere and i'm just not seeing the trees for the woods.

Lol, i knew it was staring me in the face, was just browsing through my Udemy library, and found a course that has exactly what i need sitting un-watched in my library lol

I will show you the meshes later after work today. I dont know about blender, but in max and fragmotion I keep meshes down below this limit, combine them and I can have complex objects with multi meshes in them work fine.


Notice on the right side the mesh listings and the poly counts. Notice the total poly count center bottom panel.
This is an animated model and does work in GG. Will post a video later today.

Yeah, i know it works like that, i'm not disputing that. I'm saying that a single mesh of 40,000 poly's went into gameguru fine for me a the weekend (manually though not through the importer it throws a wobbly in the importer), i didn't have to make it as separate objects inside the mesh to do it.

Will have to ask Lee if he uped the poly count. I have been conforming to this since the classic days.

Re-opening this thread, because i had a surprise today.

With regards to the original question, what is or isn't low poly. Today i was messing around playing with models ripped out of world of warcraft (this is perfectly legal, they even have a tool for it and a way to download your characters for 3d printing), because i wanted to learn how they create that style of art.

Now that is a game that is supposed to be low poly by design because of it being an online massively multiplayer game, yet looking at some of their models, they're over 80k poly's, even buildings are coming coming out as 50k poly's with 8k textures, so much for low poly, i wouldn't have even dreamed of using textures that size let alone models with that high a poly count, i'm stunned, they must have one seriously well optimised engine.

As long as the collision meshes are reasonable it doesn't really matter that much if a few static entities are high poly, things that really need to be low poly are those entities that are scattered around the map in huge numbers, things like rocks, trees, bushes etc.

How many of the WOW models have multiple layers of LOD meshes btw?

None that i have ripped so far. But theres thousands of models with similat names, so the software that read the wmo files might be seeing lod models as seperate models.

Ahh, that makes sense. They only need load the higher poly version when the player gets closer and when out of view they can delete the high poly version entirely and reclaim the memory used.

I would love the "know how" to do this. But, what happens when the high poly version needs to come back into view? It reappears? Loops some how? I know I'm an idiot.

Im not sure myself, all i know is the importer provides the model without any lod, as i said they might have lod but the importer i use might seperate them into different models.

Took a look on google to see if i could find out more, but in regards to wow the only info i can find regarding lod is something called load on demand, and what we're talking about is level of detail right?

Level of detail

Yup thats what i thought, but looking at various blogs and posts by blizzard they talk about using a system called load on demand instead, its a bit vague so i dont really understand it and it might be about something entirely different though.

OK, here's something interesting, i had another quick look before leaving for work this morning, and looking at the model structures there's dozens of objects in one mesh, but nothing marked LOD.

So i thought maybe they'd made each plank and wall etc. as separate meshes within the model, so i started taking the walls out and what i found is intriguing.

Each building isn't actually 70k to 80k at all, the buildings themselves are pretty low poly, however hidden inside each building are dozens of furniture models, every variation of furniture that the style of building might contain is in there. It looks like they use some sort of loading system that reads the model and chooses which meshes in the model it will load, so they can have multiple variations of furniture lay out without loading multiple actual models, hence why there was an 8k texture.

I wonder if that reduces memory usage in some way, and if so how? and could that be a way for GameGuru to go in the future?

That would be so awesome.