Polygon Count Question

[shadowx089]

So Yeah, Me New, only 3 months self teaching, Game models. Introduction over.

So Yeah, I'm over here looking at the poly count displaying the Verts, Edges, Faces, Tris, UVs and Well I'm baffled.

What is my polygon count? I'm new to this still and have been modeling things for a little while not asking myself that question yet for games.

What am I suppost to do with it all? Add it all up? DO I only count the faces? What?

Oh, P.S. The New User Section would not let me make a post there, it also says i'm logged out when I go to that section and after I log in I just get an error page. So, I posted here.

[joojaa]

Well, in general its the number in you tris section.

But thats the simplified answer, it rather depends on how the engine your targeting is made, so they might count a flat quad a as one polygon as well. But the thing is poly count for games does NOT reflect the amount of polygons you have on screen. Hence the tris section. because the hardware counts each triangle as a individual element.

[shadowx089]

It always has to be complex doesn't it. THey have to have multi things and not make a standered one type of number. I guess I will have to ask the engine sites if I want to find out what their engines look for.

Thankyou,

P.S Fix the New User section.

[joojaa]

QUOTE(shadowx089 @ 11/24/07, 09:54 PM) [snapback]276936[/snapback]
THey have to have multi things and not make a standered one type of number.

Well its because actually polygon count is not entirely what they look for most of the time, but they have to give people some guidelines so they say the count value because its relatively easy to measure. Its a kind of proxy for what they would really like to measure.

Ideally they would want to minimize the number of vertices's, and have as compact representation as possible to push around, but artists usually dont want to know the details so they keep themselves in terms that are not so relative.

3d is very close to the way the technology its done at all times, and because theres many separate developers around theres also very many views of whats the right thing to go about.