Unit poly count

[croxis]

What are the general poly ranges for units found in the game and what is considered reasonable?

 

[Killamike718]

Well the average poly count in a firaxis model and what they expect modders to make are in the range of 800-1000, but of course dont forget that there are plenty of exceptions like for example if a unit is alone like a plane, they can have a higher poly count becuase its only one of them instead of 3 soo for a unit alone a good poly count might be around 2000. (remember the polycount is measured in tri's)

 

[croxis]

Thank you. Also are polys limited to three sides or can the engine handle 4+ sided polys?

 

[Killamike718]

well game engines could handle what they are programmed to handle and if you tried to import a 4 sided polygon into the NIF format, either the exporter will triangleize them for you or it will give you an error. I dont know why game engines primarily use 3 sided polys, maybe its a technical thing. You can always model something that has a mix of both, or even 5+ sides, than there should be a menu that can automatically triangleize them, depending on what 3D package your using.

 

[croxis]

and again, thanks

 

[Rabbit, White]

Thank you. Also are polys limited to three sides or can the engine handle 4+ sided polys?

You can create as many sided polys as you want and you don't have to worry about converting them to triangles since they're really already are, you just might not be seeing that, especially in max. And in any case the exporter will make sure that however you make the engine can handle it.

 

[croxis]

Well I will be using the nif plugin for blender so I am not sure if that handles it

 

[Zurai]

I dont know why game engines primarily use 3 sided polys, maybe its a technical thing.

All gaming-level graphics cards are made to accelerate triangles. They're the most basic shape and you can convert any polygon into triangles, so why accelerate anything more complex?

 

[Rabbit, White]

I have never done any model making but how can you have a 3d shape with only 3 sides? Even a tetrahedron has 4 sides (the base + 3 sloaping sides).

It doesn't mean everything has to have 3 sides, it just means that everything can be broken down to triangles. Think about, if you define a plane using points in space, what is the most basic plane you can get? Two points gives you a line, but three points already give a plane, anything beyond three is more complex. Any flat surface of a model (and in conventional 3d modeling tools, every model is composed of flat surfaces, even if they're very small) can be broken down into groups of 3 points, each creating a single triangle. And while it's not accurate these triangles are most often referred to as polygons.