Triangulated Polys,videogames, and polygonal model

[blueframe]

Do models absolutly HAVE to be triangulated to be ported over to a 3d game environment? I know 3DSMax only works with triangles but both Maya and SI|XSI work on PURE polygons and then allow you to triangulate them. Anyway, when Ido this it totaly SCREWS my model all to hell look:

"I PULLED THE IMAGES"

Now Triangulated:

"I PULLED THE IMAGES"

Do you see what I mean? Are there any game artist out there using Maya that can help me. I HAVE to get a job in the game industry and as of right now...YEAH RIGHT! H E L P ! ! !

Oh, BTW Triangulated the model w/ all objects is 7100 polys, high yes. But, I'm not wanting to work on PC games, no, but those HIGH-END CONSOLES.

[1000101-]

Even for a high end console he's a bit poly heavy. When developing models for realtime; you have to consider the environment and other characters on screen. Lets just say you have 5 guys at 10k polys eachy; thats 50 thousand polys in players alone. Now add the environment; you could be looking at another 50-75k. So your throwing 100k polys per frame onna console; plus texture map overhead; lighting; the transformation of vertices for animation. It all adds up. Then factor in CPU overhead for the games AI and sound effects and all that.
Besides; you could do this character in about 1500 polys for sure.
As far as your question; game engines will triangulate poly models in the engine; so you need to build your geometry accordingly. Thats one thing that makes max so popular for games. Its ability to do edge turns to affect how the triangles will be rendered in real time.
You normally won't have to triangulate your models in maya before exporting to game engine; but its a good idea to do it beforehand at least to see how its going to look; because like it or not; the engines gonna do it for you.
And big tip of the day; Remember to save some details for texture maps. Not every detail requires triangles :>

That Ole Russell

[ozz-2005]

in max your not limited to triangles. this limitation was up to max 3. but in ,max 4 you can go as high as you want.

[skullnation]

One of my instructors who has worked in games for quite a few years said that the model can either be tri's or quad's but not both. So when your modeling make sure to work in one or the other. If you plan on converting to SubD's for an high res stuff the model has to be quads. The model seems awfully heavy as well, try modeling it with far less polys. I've take some of my low poly models around 550 faces and come out with a lower tesselation count than what you have here
(around 2200) Remember that a lot of the detail you have added in such as the straps and the facial features are not necessary, they can be acheived with a texture map much more easily. Same with handsm, my instructor told me most modelers don't go beyond the mitten look. Fire up your PS2 or X-box and take a closer look at the models and you'll see what I'm talking about. Another one of my instructors from Ronin games said most main characters don't go above 5000. Hope this helps.

Keep Modeling

[blueframe]

ThanX man I appreciate it. I still wounder though because if you look at the NEW Resident Evil game on the GameCube the characters are made up of almost 20,000 polys! Same With fighting games, in SSB:M on the GameCube the characters have at LEAST 5000 polys in them, some going beyond that. Most Xbox games seem to have tons and tons of polygons in its game characters also, look at Project Ego, or shoot any game on the Xbox has Tons of polys in all the models. The PS2 can't push Crap for geometry so I see where you are comming from with that. Anyway, you guys suggest 1500 or 500 polys..>What a joke, many Quake 3 model have around 2000 polys and some have as high as 6500(modeled reallly badly) Facial feature ARE necessary, how do you get expresion without them? Again I appreciate all of your comments but you guys seem to be living about two years ago...

look:

You are telling me that these two models only have 5000 polys in them!!!

Or howabout this:

Anyway, let me know what you guys think. Like I said, maybe PC games can only use 500(yeah right) to 1500(still funny) poly characters but the GameCube and Xbox can sure have a lot more...

[user_deleted]

I think you'll find that the only 3D in Resident Evil ARE the characters, therefore they can afford a much higher poly count. Where you got the idea that Q3 models have 2000/6500 polys in them I have no idea, normal characters are about 1000 / 800.
Try only using poly detail only where it is necessary. You want facial expression, so put the polys there. RE character bodies aren't as high as yours, but with good texturing and clever lighting/shading you get the desired affect. Use the polys to get a smooth silhouette, use textures to fill it in.
I can appreciate you want to put as many polys in as possible with the new hardware thats out, but IT IS NOT NECESSARY!

[skullnation]

It looks like you're confusing pre rendered in game cinematics with real time gameplay. the new generation of game consoles can handle around 2 million to 5 million polys on the screen at one time so yes they can have higher polycounts but you have to remember everything in the scene has to be added together including the environment, background props, and characters. These all combined add up very quickly. You also have to remember that textures, bump mapping, lighting and particle effects all take up space. If you have 20,000 poly character models they would only be used in the pre rendered stuff. The largest poly count I've heard of was 10,000 for a main character in an adventure game (This comes from someone who actually works in the industry, on a game currently in production.) Just remember that having tons of polys doesn't make your model any better. You need to work on modeling cleanly and efficiently, as well as making the model easy to work with for the texture artist, the animator, and the setup people. Having lightweight models means more characters and enemies on the screen at once as well as having larger environments and interactive BG elements. By the way you can get facial features from animating textures.

[blueframe]

10000 seems like a ton for an adventure game to say the least! Anyway, that is a REAL-TIME game shot in Resident Evil as well as Super Smash Brothers Melee(the Game is Paused). So I 'm not sure what you are refering to with cut scene comment. Anyway, there is always room for improvemnt and like I said I want tons of polys!!!

[joojaa]

Well you need to triangulate by hand and then think which way you need your highlights the most and traingulate based on that!

Something people forgot to mention is LOD wich will make you polygon budjet much much higher. Howvever you need to bould your model so that it woks as well at 500, 1000 and 10000 polygons etc. And you need to model 5-10 different sized versions of the same modell.
Allso note that the texturers/animators will have a big say on how the polygons are to be placed

[blueframe]

WOW! ThanX, that brings all sorts of new ISSUES up, the part about the texture artists. Anyway, I was looking at some models from some other games and they don't appear to have more than 2K polys so I'm working with that right now. I modeled a Ninja Turtle a while back in XSI and he only had like 560 untriangulated faces so we'll have to see what I can do.

Here is that turtle: (560polys)

[1000101-]

Resident evil environments are prerendered. that saves lots of polys leaving 10-15k/character; plus yer average zombie has about 4k polys.
On the super smash brothers; that just goes to show what good modelling and LOD bias can do for graphics. Crank up the detail on close ups; then drop off the detail on long shots.
If you want tons of polys you might have a hard time finding work; except maybe in the cut scene market.
At least look at LOD from a workflow perspective. Its alot easier to animate and rig a well made 2 thousand poly model than a 20 thousand poly model.

[blueframe]

Have you played SSB:M? I don't think they LOD at all in that game. you can tell when stuff LODs because the shadows change kinda funny, and the objects get a little dissoriented. Plus when you are in the Trophy gallery yu can deffinetly tell the models DON'T LOD. The TRUTh is that character model can have tons of polys today! Oh, and in RE for the GameCube sometimes 3 or 4 characters are on screen close up and without LODing! What about VF4, Tekken4? TONS OF POLYS!!! I do enjoy this conversation

[1000101-]

most shadow effects are done with shadow maps; they rarely LOD those since a map's render time isn't determined by detail but by resolution.
For fighting games, Most of those 75-80% of the polys in the scene go in the character; not the environment. Trophy galleries are often prerendered though given that real time look and style.
Check out games like Halo and their like.
Notice how the characters are consisted of a very finite number of polys. PLUS the environment.
You'll see what I mean then

[s-j-tubbrit]

PC Games - TO DATE - Between 500 to 2,000 polys usually, upto 5,000 at most depending on type of game

PS2 Games - renders usually about 100,000 polys in one render cycyle, you do the math, you have to include your environment and everything else into that, so if you have 60,000 polys for your environment, that means you have 40,000 polys left over for characters, vehicles, etc, etc

Others consoles xbox/gamecube will have higher polycounts but you are still limited, the only place you will see poly counts like you mention, i.e. 10,000 a piece is usually in fighting games, where there's usually only 2 characters on screen at any one time, with a limited environment, but most developers will STILL use LOD's no matter what kind of game it is. but talk of 10 seperate LOD's is a bit over the top, usually (for a car game for example) the LOD count would be 4 LOD's, shadows are usually seperate objects and therefore not connected with the LOD's changing.

And VF4, Tekken4, yes, tons of polys, but they're the only characters on the screen remember with a limited environment.

Your character requires a lot of work to be brought up to the level of todays game, it's very cubic looking right now, I think you need to work on your layout of polys mostly.

[joojaa]

Yeah the developpers would be stupid not to use LOD yeah maybe 5 - 6 lods is a max much. But 10 is quite good for those ultra sophisticated models that get very close and need lots of details.

But its nowhere said that the entire character has to be 1 object it could be separated into two parts that have separate lods. The problem with this is that most gamer cards do so poor edge detection that this becomes hard to do for complex modells. unless you resort to gimics. But this works fine for mechanical modells.

[blueframe]

WoW you guys need to play some REAL games like...Super Smash Bros. Melee. IT DOES NOT LOD. The Trophy Gallery IS REALTIME....YOU CAN ZOOM IN ROTATE, do whatever to the trophies at all angles, change the lighting. Yeah its pre-rendered. I guess this is moot. YOu guys don't even sound like you play games. ThanX though.

[skullnation]

For someone who wants to get a job in videogames right away, you sure don't want to listen to anyones advice. Just keep doing what you're doing and see how long it takes you to get a job.

[s-j-tubbrit]

POST DELETED BY ME...

[1000101-]

I play real games. Super smash brothers melee follows the typical poly rules too. The environment is almost nothing; and most of it goes in the characters. The trophy gallery is probably a cube with textures on each wall; and a couple really high poly trophys.
And yeah I game; I also understand things like poly budgets and workarounds for many things.

[joojaa]

Yeah a good cubic panorama shot, will fool most of ya! You can do one of theese in a zap too with a 3d app.