Current mod team polycount estimates

[Ravenloff]

Please have a representative from your mod team weigh in on what your team is considering as limits for

player models
vehicles
weapons (both 1st and 3rd person)
misc

Are you using dynamic or static LOD? If static, how many versions?

And by all means please give us your interpretation of just how big the maps are actually going to be and still have the damned game work

I'm going to ressurect a Torque engine total conversion for Half-Life 2 and I'm currently doing the research before I start the team building portion of the long trail that is mod development. The design is already solid.

 

[ukfilmer]

1 million polygons! nah, hellblaze i think is aiming for < 2000 for weapon models, no cars or characters yet so meh

 

[Ravenloff]

Pendragon,

I read through those a few times, but it still seems a bit ambiguous. On the one hand he's saying that Bf1942-sized maps would require "scaling down" models. On the other, he says its up to the mod team to decide how big a "unit" is and that it doesn't matter to the engine as along as you follow the 1/32 unit collision guideline.

This seems to contradict (not directly, though) what he says elsewhere about how Gordon is 33 units tall. 6.06 cm per unit assuming Gordon is 2 meters tall? Mapps of just shy of 1000 meters per side?

 

[SidewinderX]

1) Half-Life 2 does not support dynamic LOD...you have to make all your LOD models...
Cold War: Melting Point is aiming for at least 3 verison for the LOD

playermodel wise, Cold WAr: Melting Point is aiming for ~5000.

weapons wise, we aim for 1500-3000 for 1st person
our 3rd person range from 700 to 1700


vehicles: closed verison between 4000 and 8000 polys.

 

[random.hero]

to second uk's estimates, we are aiming for around 2000 polies for all guns ( little more for rifles and a little less for pistols ). although we have no characters so far, i was going to aim for similar counts to that of HL2, seeing as Hell Blaze is a single player mod. therefore 6-7k for main characters and 4-5k for creatures.

not sure about cars in the mod as of yet, but i would say 9-10k would be sufficient for a maximum on most cars + detailed interior.

 

[Shinobi]

don't forget to consider how much texture space you want to allocate to the various LOD's or else you might bottleneck...

 

[random.hero]

quoted from the VERC site about LOD meshes, they say that Source 'doesnt support dynamic LODs' but they're aiming for 3-4. for a smoother transition id say 4-6 would be good enough.

 

[simon]

we go for:
vehicles: 5000
characters: between 4000/5000
weapons: between 1200/1800
weapons 3rd person: don't know yet (probbly around 500 or so)

this is for a MP MOD, for a SP mod i think one can go higher

 

[IchI]

Weapons:

First Person: 2000 triangles
Third Person: 100 Triangles

Maybe have a LOD on the 3rd person model if you are picky for quality.

Characters Multiplayer:

LOD Mesh 1: 5000 Triangles
LOD Mesh 2: 2500 Triangles
LOD Mesh 3: 700 Triangles

LOD Systsme also have Bump map and also radiant Map LOD's (I think, not sure. I know theya re 7 layers of LOD)

Vehicles:

****ing Ultra Mech: 8000 Triangles (****ing Huge)
Tank: 4000 Triangles (Average)
Go Kart: 800 Triangles (Small)

All with LOD systems

Satatic Meshes:

Anything: 100/2000 depending on size

Yet again, all with LOD systems.

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P.S. remeber all LOD systems have to be prefabricated, this means you make them. Not the source engine like some people seem to think
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They would be mine anyway. I hardly know anything about the engine so its not exactly 100% correct. But I would sujest them to anyone who was looking for approx.

 

[ukfilmer]

ichi i think you can afford to go more than 100 polygons for a third person model, maybe like 400-500

 

[The Dark Elf]

ichi i think you can afford to go more than 100 polygons for a third person model, maybe like 400-500

IchI's mod might be planning on lots of action on screen at once so lowering poly counts to take that into account... I'm just guessing though But if their using normal mapping aswell then they could quite easily get away with it being so low

 

[IchI]

hmm....

10x5000 = 50000
10x100 = 1000

Thats 51000 polgons already gone. How many inview polgons can hl2 handle?

(this is like max polgons you could expect to see on your screen with 10 chracters at lod1.)

 

[phantomdesign]

I'll be heavily using NORMAL mapping on the vehicles in my racing game. Chances are htere'll be 3 LOD models for each object, and each LOD model will scale both in texture sizes and poly-counts. I haven't deternimed the number of polygons yet for objects, as it'll mostly be based on a certain level of quality.