Polygon Count

[Josh]

Because I've heard the old polygon limits in the wiki are outdated, what sort of polygon counts for units and building are we trying to stay under at this point?

Thanks in Advance

[Khopesh]

Well, we've been trying to keep it as low as possible (around 500-800 tris) for the base human characters in this thread (before adding any armour, clothes, weapons, etc).

After doing a quick search on Google it seem other modern RTS games range between 1000-2000 tris.

In these games you usually only have a small zoom range, yet In 0 A.D we can zoom in an out pretty far (similar to the Total War series, but not quite to that scale). Anyway, I think the Total War series uses a range of models (high poly when zoomed in, low poly when zoomed out). I'm personally wondering if we can do something like this for 0 A.D? That way we can have better looking models (and animations) when zoomed in and still have good performance when zoomed out with hundreds of characters on screen.

Just some food for thought.

[Zaggy1024]

In these games you usually only have a small zoom range, yet In 0 A.D we can zoom in an out pretty far (similar to the Total War series, but not quite to that scale). Anyway, I think the Total War series uses a range of models (high poly when zoomed in, low poly when zoomed out). I'm personally wondering if we can do something like this for 0 A.D? That way we can have better looking models (and animations) when zoomed in and still have good performance when zoomed out with hundreds of characters on screen.

We've been thinking about that for a while, and we may do it, but if it requires artists to modify models, then it wouldn't be so great...

[LordGood]

It would be painstaking to rebuild lower poly models yes, but given the current lag situation it might be necessary to do so.

I know the lag is caused by pathing but cleaning up models couldnt hurt either.

[Mythos_Ruler]

It would be painstaking to rebuild lower poly models yes, but given the current lag situation it might be necessary to do so.

I know the lag is caused by pathing but cleaning up models couldnt hurt either.

Pretty much all the lag is caused by the pathfinding and AI.

To answer the question, I think standard buildings can range from 1000-3000 tris, while a wonder can range up to 5000 or more (they tend to be rather large and take up a lot of the screen).

[Josh]

Pretty much all the lag is caused by the pathfinding and AI.

To answer the question, I think standard buildings can range from 1000-3000 tris, while a wonder can range up to 5000 or more (they tend to be rather large and take up a lot of the screen).

What about boats and ground units?

[Alevyr]

Dropping a model from hi-poly to low-poly is actually quite easy. If you're smart about it, you can keep the same UV unwrap and rigging (usually, you rig the higher poly one, and the engine matches it to the lower poly rig, as when you're zoomed out accurate rigging is less important). It would be easy, if a little time consuming, to take all the models already existing and make lower poly versions of them.

Going from low to high, is a bit more difficult however.

[Khopesh]

Making low-poly meshes from high poly ones is farily easy. It's just a matter of removing certain edge-loop. This way you wouldn't need to redo the UV mapping either. at the remaining edge-loops should be in the same place (usually). Even if you did move them, it wouldn't matter too much as being zoomed out far enough you wouldn't see any slight distortions.

As for the texture: you can simply use the same one, but just save it out at a lower resolution.

[Enrique]

Making low-poly meshes from high poly ones is farily easy. It's just a matter of removing certain edge-loop. This way you wouldn't need to redo the UV mapping either. at the remaining edge-loops should be in the same place (usually). Even if you did move them, it wouldn't matter too much as being zoomed out far enough you wouldn't see any slight distortions.

As for the texture: you can simply use the same one, but just save it out at a lower resolution.

I wish blender had the ability to leave the UVs intact when removing edgeloops :/

@ Josh: You can try making it fairly high-poly (I mean, model without worrying about the triangle count) and remove details/polygons once you have finished if the count is too high. If you are loosing "needed" detail removing them, try to use the texture to fake that detail.

[Khopesh]

I wish blender had the ability to leave the UVs intact when removing edgeloops :/

Awww, really?? darn!

[historic_bruno]

Don't forget that we now support normal mapping, so that's an option too

[Mythos_Ruler]

Don't forget that we now support normal mapping, so that's an option too

And parallax, which actually gives the illusion of a million more polies.

[DasBilligeAlien]

I wish blender had the ability to leave the UVs intact when removing edgeloops :/

well it did work in some older version.... but i can' remember wich one.

[Enrique]

I think it still destroying the UV mapping. In one of the latest versions there's a new algorithm in the decimate modifier that lets you preserve the UV mapping despite of te actual triangle reduction that the modifier causes. They could just make something similar for the edgeloops....

[Genava55]

What is the average polygon count now?

In comparison with the old total war, it seems that 800 is really low:

https://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?790126-What-is-the-limit-in-polygons-for-Medieval-2-models-using-the-4gb-patch

[vladislavbelov]

1 hour ago, Genava55 said:

What is the average polygon count now?

In comparison with the old total war, it seems that 800 is really low:

https://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?790126-What-is-the-limit-in-polygons-for-Medieval-2-models-using-the-4gb-patch

We have some old but relevant (because of our audience and we don't have LODs) rules about polycount: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/ArtPolyCountGuidelines, but sadly some new models broke them in a bad manner