polygon count
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/polygon count
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| I am trying to decide on what the optimum number of polygons to have in my level. I know that this would vary depending on the user's graphics card so where can i find a list of popular graphics cards with the recommended number of polygons it can handle? |
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| That totally depends on the genre of what your doing, is it realtime or turn based, Whats the perspective, what hardware base are you aiming for, etc etc. All I can say is get a basic prototype of your project running, then start playtesting detail levels. Thats the only real way to know. I few good testers with a range of hardware can help as well. |
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| In Blitz 3D, surfaces will kill you long before polygons do. |
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| I know my old GF2mx had no problem throwing around 30,000+ polygons if the surface count was real low and the fillrate didn't become a problem. But if the surface count is high or the fillrate gets too much, you could cripple it with less than 5,000 polys. The only way to know is to do what Dev suggested. |
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| what do you guys mean by surfaces i.e what is the difference bewteen surface and polygon? |
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| A polygon is a triangle in 3D space. A surface is a collection of polygons that share similar properties (like the texture). What they're trying to tell you, is that contrary to what hardware manufacturers will have you believe, there is more to the equation of "smooth gameplay" than polygon count. Surface count and fillrate play a much more important role these days. You can easilly get away with hundreds of thousands of polygons on screen at the same time, if they're really small (relative to screen resolution) and all share the same texture. |
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| This may be a stupid question, but what is a high surface count? 100 surfaces, 1000 surfaces....more? I know it probably depends on your graphics card, but for something average (GeForce2 MX for instance). Ragnar |
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| 100 surfaces is too much IMO, but it depends. The thing is that you really can't give any hard rules about safe / good poly- or surface count, it's too complex issue to to be "generalized" in any way. I follow the princle of "enoughness", ie I will use enough polygons to make things look good enough for me, and as low number as possible for surfaces. In the end the code will matter much too, how you optimize entity culling and other gameplay speed related stuff... it's a sort of sum of all the things, and not just one separate part. |
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