Low Poly is a waste of time and creativity.
I?m now running 10 x 40,000 poly figures fully animated and vertex blended at 20+fps on as low a spec as an Nvidia 5200 using directx. All with full game play character smarts, collision detection, gravity / physics effects (none of which effect graphics performance anyway much) and special effects, and networked with 4 co-players with a 150,000 poly scenery figure models with 1000x1000 plus textures and the background with 3000x3000 plus.
Keep in mind the Nvidia 5200 is 10 x slower than the 6800 and 20x + slower than the 7800, ps3 and xbox 360.
This means WHAT DOES LOW POLY MATTER!
It?s a waste of development effort and stifles creativity. Hasn?t anyone in this forum heard of MOORE?S LAW?
Admittedly it is my own code not some stupid inefficient engine. SKINNING ? what the heck is that where you want to get a chicken without skin? It?s soooo inefficient and over complex ? tip for the month use geometry blending 1 level only (any more may be inefficient and is unecessary anyway should apply vertex weights for smoothness) and animate materials using transform.world and joints transform.world1 ? I shouldn?t be telling you this secret you don?t deserve my love. It?s like the time when I was younger when I discovered how to unchain the 256 colour VGA mode 14 years ago to allow for paging in the only colour mode over 16 colours and shared it with everyone ? no thanks then and will get no thanks now just more gutter sniping from the inexperienced.
Tip - start designing larger models - low poly will mean nothing if the coders are any good in a couple of years. Although, that assumes good coders who don't have to rely on inefficient engines???
hope you guys don't mind me putting 2cents in even though i am not a developer or artist or much of anything other than a code ruining mod attempter lol, but on this topic i seem to run across alot of discussion around this type "low quality vs high quality" mind you 6 years ago i didn't know the true benefit of building my own pc, it wasn't until guys were making fun of me and my computer and unl33t skills at games, so i invested alot of time, broken nails and fried components till i learned what or how to build and use computers to a decent potential, one problem with the public and games is that many consumers "spent many years as a electronics retail manager" are not educated by truth but by rumor or by uneducatd friends. the original claimed the 5200 running great, it is cool and all but hoenstly a 5200 is not going to match the requirments need for textures and graphics of todays and early yesterday engines at a resolution that most set at default. many people buy a game, put it in the machine, install it, click play and that is it, never looking once under the graphics tab. and think there ok, even when running at 20fps. but what really hurts the ability for games to grow on the market and push the limits of graphics and such techology is the mass public. example, i went into a store recently when building a person a new computer, i was seeking out a mid range 5700 ultra as he didn't really play games and this would last him a few years even if he decided to try some few minor low games. i am seeking out the card when a young man asks if i need help, i tell him ok i need this card, he grabs a ati 9200 and says here, this is a much better card, i have one and it has no problems playing this game at all "some 5 + year old game" i look at him and want to knock him in the head with the box, i told him, ok i'll find the card i want, he pushes this cards PRICE and PERFORMANCE non stop on me, i stop and explain to him the differnce in dx versions, bandwidth of the card, the gpu of the card and so on, he tells me oh but trust me this card is FAST. i grabbed an x800 and say so will this do the same, he goes yea a little better but not for the money.
that kind of training, education and public knowledge is what kills the ability to really grow outside the bounds of what we see today. the ubar pc's that hard core gamers build are a small percentage of your market, i am sure many of you know this. just wanted to give you a non creator view on the issue.
also, sorry guys but developers really need to put the TRUTH on minimum specs lol, they are always so far off the chart, 64 meg card is required, ok at 640x480 low details, 16 bit graphics, SUREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE lol
until the computer oem's and the market learn and understand what they buy, you guys will be making low poly , low detail settings for years to come
quote:Originally posted by Tall_Nick
I'd hate to come in at the last minute but no-one has talked about the current gen Handhelds.
....
and the PSP 15000 polys
That is miss-information :) please source it...
Nice thread, very intriguing. I had to read front to end.
I quite like the passion poser comes in with and it is interesting how many people seem dug into their corners, sniping away. Prove it, prove it :)
I picked up a few points of interest.
1. The provided examples of lo poly mesh like the ea tropper, which already has been shipped and as such is a thing of the past. Rest assured charcters Ea is working on today look VERY different. The Unreal ones poser linked are about to become the norm for mainstream players. If your not familiar with construction techniques for details like this today, you are already behind the curve.
2. Hi detail wastes time and developers like the short time frame of lower resolution.
I think that is a mute point simply because hi it's where its going and the race is on to create hi-detail in (as usual) the shortest possible time. A combo of sub division and bumpmapping will get you results just as fast, once people are skilled up that is :P however good visuals are always build to what is required and if you can save a quarter of your resourse it simply means you get an extra character on screen. Detail vs numbers of stuff. Balance :)
3. As someone said different games/platforms have different requirements. If your game is about character interaction of course you pump resource into characters and make them as convincing as required. If you make an rts you need loads of creatures and resources are of course much lower. However instance techniques still allows to go for highest possible detail.
4.Streaming geometry is the fastest possible way to animate. What made me sit up and notice though is that I havent heard of that technique since the good old sega saturn :P ,rip, as far as I know most of the original sega 3d arcade games (vf etc) used this techniqe, although I can't back up this claim. The down side of this is the lack of control nodes used for interactivity. Most animation systems employ realtime blending and physics/code modifiers on animations, so this inflexible technique is very dated. It doesnt mean, however that it doesn't have its uses :P
So I like where poser is comming from, but to simply say low poly is a waste of time is a loaded argument, aimed into a certain sector of game creation, as everyone knows that economy of scale is what realtime is all about :)