Hi,
Im currently in my first year of 3D computer animation and for assignment I want to go and extra mile and use it to get some practice in Unreal engine, The assignment is for creating an enviroment and im currently making somewhat big cave with 4 towers and tree in the middle. The question is, how high can I go with the polycount, I currently have around 12k polygons for the towers and cave, so I want to know how many can I get for the Tree which will be the main piece. And also, how much will simple particle effects and better lighting affect the performance ?
Thank you a lot!
P.S: I know Im aiming high, but I think that challenging yourself is the best way to learn.
I am going to answer this in the one way that i hate, it depends. yeah I’m being a hypocrite but I can give my opinion. In your scene it sounds small so the engine will never lag or anything. The only reason to care about poly count here is to show people that you know when to use it or not when it really matters. Some people can give you a number but until I see what these meshes look like, I will not give you a number. For things that don’t move like a tower, you never want an edge that doesn’t hold some sort of silhouette. So if you delete an edge and nothing happens then keep it deleted 12k does sound high but the tower that is in my head right now is a simple castle one with a cone top so I have no idea how you are using those polys. All in all polys won’t slow you down.
Lighting also won’t slow you down but use about 2 stationary lights near each other and when you just want to put some light color on something, use static. Moveable lights are very expensive so use them if you want but they are usually the headlights of car or something. They are the highest quality but they are always on. With static lights, they are only on before you bake lighting, they will bake the color into whatever its hitting and that’s it. Least expensive and used a lot but in smart ways. And stationary lights are in the middle, and can only have 3 stationary lights overlapping with each other. If you have more then they will start shutting off. So yeah lighting, if used correctly, won’t be an issue.
Now let me tell you about particle effects, they are fun but expensive. You can easily go crazy with them and have it lag. Most of the time once they are in the engine they will be fine but I made a scene where there is dust in the air and its everywhere and it slows down opening unreal. Because its loading so much. So be careful with them because they can be dangerous. Basically they are one poly per dust particle so just make sure there aren’t a lot of polys spawning at one time. You can check that in the particle system menu, bottom right of the preview. It says x amount spawned / x amount total. But yeah you really need to play with particles to understand them.
says here you posted this a couple months ago, sorry it didn’t get answered sooner. Hope my ranting still helped. I’m looking for what people have to say about poly counts these days too. My teammates are getting on my nerves about it and I would like to know the math behind poly counts and textures and etc when it comes to unreal. Poly count really shouldn’t matter anymore, everyone is saying its all about the textures now but some lesser artists seem to think other wise and I would love to know who is right.