Poly counts - rules, or more like guidelines?

zahgrim

Chieftain
Joined
Mar 3, 2009
Messages
11
Location
Toronto, ON, Canada
Hi all,

I was just taking the first full run through of my newly created mod, and was happily enjoying the fruits of my labours, when I noticed a significant slow down in the game as I got into the late modern era (turn 350+)... after a few more turns, the game simply CTD.

This got me thinking, so I looked into the poly counts on the new units/unique units/reskins that I had downloaded from CivFanatics for use in my mod; Most were in the 1500-2000 poly range, and I even had one (an F-14) that was 9500!! Perhaps not coincidentally, the CTD happened within a few turns of my starting to produce F-14's in earnest!

My questions are these:

1) Is the 1000 polygon count a hard and fast rule, or a guideline?

2) Is acceptable poly count also a function of your system (my system is new, quad core, qaud SLI, etc. etc.)?

3) Can one assume that performance vs. poly counts can be estimated on a 1-to-1 basis? (i.e. If you have a 10,000 poly unit, but only ONE, is that the same performance wise as having 10 1000 poly units active in the game?)

4) Is it possible that I am not counting the polys correctly? (I imported the .nifs into 3ds Max, and used the HotKey "7" to get the counts)

To me the answers to the above SEEM logical and obvious, but I would like to confirm my assumptions with someone who KNOWS!

Any help/assistance/opinions would be welcome!

Cheers,
Z.
 
I believe the polys are counted as triangles. I guess check the 3DS manual. If you download the CIV4 extension for 3DS max on civfanatics, there is a program called Sceneviewer that is standalone and gives triangle poly counts too. I know polys are occasionally counted as quads (double triangles) but I think triangle counting is industry standard.

I'm not sure what the hard fast rules for polys are. 1000 to 2000 is probably acceptable, but it likely will depend on you system---video card, processor speed, ram speed and quantity, etc..

Not sure, but I believe polys are additive---total triangles that you have the comp drawn on one screen, regardless of the exact combination. A screen with tons of polys on it is more likely to lag in my experience. And that's logical, because the system is drawing all those triangles at once.

All I can say is that "i believe". I have no references other than I've been counting unit polys myself lately.
 
I am no real pro either, but that are the guidelines I was taught:

1) Polycounts do not only matter for units, but also for buildings, remember that. Buildings shouln't have much more than 500 polys, if they are build in every city (<<500 if they are build more than one in a city (city sets)), not nuch more than 1000 polys, if they are build only in some citys, and <2000 if they are build only once (wonders). Units should be safe, if they have 1000-2000 polys. But that are only guidelines not hard limits. Also remember, that it does matter how big the textures are. A 512x512 or bigger texture will cause problems on some systems. Also it's not godd, if a building/unit does have many different base textures, for example a texture for the head, onother one for the uniform a third one for the horse, the rifle/sword/whatever is on another, and so on.

2) Definitivly yes, the system does matter. Some people do report that the same high poly unit runs well on they system, which doesn't run at all on other systems. They graphic card is very important for that.

3) Unknown but likely, if the texture has the same size.

4) Importing it into Max should count it correctly. But there is a much easier way: Just open the model in NifViewer. It is called triangle count there, but it counts exactly the same.
 
Hey GoodGame, JustATourist,

Thanks for your replies! You have confirmed some of my suspicions, and that's a good thing!

One question back at you:

I took a look at that F-14 Model I talked about earlier, to compare poly counts... here's what I find:

In 3ds Max, "poly" count is 9544 (with a 512x512 texture to boot!)
In SceneViewer, "triangle" count is 48,601!!!!!

So, firstly, can we assume that "polys" and "triangles" are not the same thing (my understanding was that a "polygon" for is a group of triangles connected at a vertex/vertices)?

Secondly, which of the two is most relevant?
 
Here at CivFanatics, in the Unit Graphics forum... I noticed you used the term "poly" when referring to the 48,601... does that mean that triangle=poly? I know it's a super-newbie question, but I can't seem to find a definitive answer on it... and it's ruining my mod! :(
 
If you edit a model in Max and select one polygon, it is a really double triangle. This is confusing, because the polycounter does count triangles like SceneViewer is doing. So, the polygones we are talking about are absolutly the same aus triangles.

The reason why SceneView finds much more triangles than the Max polycounter is, that there are also invisible polygones, for example bones for animation. Use "Unhide all" in Max and use the polycounter again, then it should be the same amount. (If there is no problem while importing the model.)
 
The reason why SceneView finds much more triangles than the Max polycounter is, that there are also invisible polygones, for example bones for animation. Use "Unhide all" in Max and use the polycounter again, then it should be the same amount. (If there is no problem while importing the model.)

That's interesting to know. Is there a way to filter out animation effects?
 
Thank you VERY, VERY, much JustATourist... that makes sense of a number of issues for me. It leaves only one question, if it's not too much bother:

Are your poly recommendations above based on the "base" count, or the "full" count ("full" being all bones, animations, etc.)?

Thanks again, you have saved a mod that was about to be junked in utter frustration!

Cheers,
Z.
 
That's interesting to know. Is there a way to filter out animation effects?

Sorry, I don't know a way.

Are your poly recommendations above based on the "base" count, or the "full" count ("full" being all bones, animations, etc.)?

On the total/full count. Vanilla units have usually <1500 and often <800 polygones.
 
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