"Yes, but how many polygons?" An artist blog entry with interesting numbers

[nAo]

The PS2 performance analyzer confirms Faf words though cars were at least partially rendered 2 times (multipasses for the win!) so the number of triangles rendered was higher..

 

[Fafalada]

The problem is that on multiple occasions numbers for PS2 games were quoted by counting multipass/reflection polygons multiple times.
As nAo points out, it matters for rendering performance, but when discussing actual modeling detail, those numbers aren't relevant.

 

[nAo]

great minds think alike?

 

["Nerve-Damage"]

GDC Lair Hands On

I had a chance to speak with producer Sarah Stocker while Tommy Tallarico was hogging up Lair.

We started talking about the gritty, realistic look of the game and she told me that the developers tried to deliberately steer away from the bright, unrealistic colors of most fantasy fare and instead aimed for a more somber, subdued look.

To help achieve that goal, the game's graphics feature high polygon counts. The dragon and its rider alone have 150,000 polygons, while a single 16 by 16 kilometer scene is packed with 134 million polygons.

The graphics for the game were some of the most interesting I've seen for the PS3.

When I finally got my hands on the game I was impressed with how deftly the dragon winged and glided through the air.

more

 

[Neb]

The problem is that on multiple occasions numbers for PS2 games were quoted by counting multipass/reflection polygons multiple times.

How decieving that is, I always thought that when devs said the polygon count for objects it was the mesh polygon number...tsss.

Chris Wells creates warriors.

"Previous to joining Epic, I was working on PlayStation 2 games," Wells tells us. "To create a character would be around about six days, modelling characters of around 1500 to 2000 polygons, unwrapping it and skinning it."

And now? "Well, ideally, what we try to go for is two to three weeks for modelling the high poly, about a week for processing, and about one to two weeks for materials creation. Sometimes, depending on if it's a hero character, that can take about forty-five days including the concept part of it - because of the density of the meshes that we work with."

"To get the detail that we need, our characters are upwards of 30 million polygons."

Each character takes six weeks to create. There's very little room for mistakes, when going back to the drawing board can take months.

From six days to six weeks; from 2000 polygons to 30 million polygons. "It's a big difference," grins Wells, possibly winning our award for best understatement of the week - and even then, the basic figures only scratch the surface of the change that has occurred in game art in the last few years.

You know that the 30 million polygon number is for the source model but not the ingame one right? -You know normal mapping, bump mapping.. parallax etc.

Err, I knew that.

I own Gears, so I really knew that.

That is good, just checking!

 

[Neb]

GDC Lair Hands On

I had a chance to speak with producer Sarah Stocker while Tommy Tallarico was hogging up Lair.

We started talking about the gritty, realistic look of the game and she told me that the developers tried to deliberately steer away from the bright, unrealistic colors of most fantasy fare and instead aimed for a more somber, subdued look.

To help achieve that goal, the game's graphics feature high polygon counts. The dragon and its rider alone have 150,000 polygons, while a single 16 by 16 kilometer scene is packed with 134 million polygons.
The graphics for the game were some of the most interesting I've seen for the PS3.

When I finally got my hands on the game I was impressed with how deftly the dragon winged and glided through the air.

more

That is interesting, I wonder if it is the multipass number for character and dragon as it certainly doesn't look like it when playing the game. The landscape number is good to but then you would get to such high numbers to in other games if counting 16x16km area and ignoring LOD and draw distance for objects of course! :smile:

 

["Nerve-Damage"]

You know that the 30 million polygon number is for the source model but not the ingame one right? -You know normal mapping, bump mapping.. parallax etc.

Err, I knew that.

I own Gears, so I really knew that.

 

[Farid]

I updated the main post with more information. I'll add more later on.

Meanwhile, mods, feel free to add entries into the main post. I'll gladly take all the credit for that work of yours.

 

["Nerve-Damage"]

Very cool thread...

I updated the main post with more information. I'll add more later on.

Meanwhile, mods, feel free to add entries into the main post. I'll gladly take all the credit for that work of yours.

Cool!!

 

["Nerve-Damage"]

V-Rally 3 (PS2)

V-Rally 3

V-Rally 3 for the PlayStation 2 will feature realistic rally driving with plenty of tracks, fully detailed cars, and a new game engine known internally as Twilight. V-Rally 3's car models are said to contain between 15,000 and 16,000 polygons per car, including multiple layers that allow reflections and dirt to be accurately displayed. Tracks reportedly clock in at more than half a million polygons each.

Hands on

When the announcement of V-Rally 3's polygon specifications was first made, I couldn't quite believe the numbers. The game was said to boast 15,000-16,000 polygons per vehicle, and 500,000 polygons per stage. Now after extensive play with the game, Eden Studios' rally racer sure is an incredible looking title that features some of the finest car modeling and lighting effects in a racer to date. The cars are brimming with lush and vivid details. Every thing about every vehicle is precisely modeled, and I have yet to notice anything significant in terms of improper modeling. The game runs at a very smooth 60 frames per second, and in all my play I have only experienced very minimal frame rate chugs, certainly nothing worth detracting points over, or even moaning about. In comparison to WRC, V-Rally 3 is definitely the better looking title.

 

["Nerve-Damage"]

IIRC

...Dreamcast Resident Evil Code: Veronica main characters were 5k-7k polygons each, there faces alone contained over 2k polygons.

 

[Neb]

This thread got me inspired to look more into some games.

Oblivion, male - 7004 vertices for the body alone and with full armor (no shield or sword, Elven set) - 15597 vertices

Goblin body - 7540 vertices
Bear - 4902
Dog - 4883

 

["Nerve-Damage"]

Star Wars Rogue Leader: Gamecube

Rogue Leader Chat

Question: To satisfy all the forum spec and number adorers, how many millions of polygons does RL tend to push in a standard situation per second, and how long does it tend to vary? and has their been any performance increases since previous showings?

LucasArts/Factor 5: If we would start counting the polygons now the game wouldn't be done, but we estimate most scenes at 12-15 million polygons per second. The version being shown in Europe is quite a performance increase in the Hoth level compared to previous showings.

 

[Lazy8s]

Virtua Fighter polygon numbers were previously discussed on this forum.

Virtua Fighter 5
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?p=860210

1 character = 40K polys, background = 100K - 300K (VF4: 12K and 50K)

Virtua Fighter 4
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=4451

According to the latest issue of CG World (Japanese 3D graphics trade mag), the PS2 character models of VF4 are about half of the Naomi 2 version. For example, Jacky is made of 14,000 polygons in the Naomi 2 version, but in the PS2 version Jacky's model has about 7,000 polygons.

 

["Nerve-Damage"]

Mass Effect (Xbox 360)

Mass Effect Faqs

Question: How many polygons are used per character?

Answer: Well, we can't give an exact number as some characters will have more polys than others based on things like their size, complexity, whether they have weapons or armor, and that sort of thing.

But to give a rough idea, I'll use Sheppard as an example. A model of Sheppard wearing armor and carrying weapons will be somewhere in the range of 20,000 to 25,000 polygons. This would change a bit based on his armor, whether he is carry a weapon, which weapon, etc, but it's a good rough idea. Hope this helps.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

To help achieve that goal, the game's graphics feature high polygon counts. The dragon and its rider alone have 150,000 polygons, while a single 16 by 16 kilometer scene is packed with 134 million polygons.

It certainly doesn't look like it's that many polygons in the game; maybe it's the number for the source models that'll undergo the LOD calculations...

 

[Acert93]

A quote from EDGE on B3D about the PGR3 bridges:

There is an article on PGR3 in this months EDGE.

The cars are composed of 40k polygons for the interior and 40k for the exterior. Brooklyn Bridge is 600k polygons and Manhattan Bridge 1 million polygons.

Bizzare are aiming for 60fps. They also mention the draw distance for one of the unnamed cities is 3km.

For reference one of the Tokyo tracks in MSR took up just 90k polygons in its entirety.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/archive/index.php/t-22107.html

 

[Fafalada]

It certainly doesn't look like it's that many polygons in the game; maybe it's the number for the source models that'll undergo the LOD calculations...

You probably meant the characters, but as far as terrain goes:
130M for 16x16km gives you roughly 1.4Meters per polygon. Which is pretty great resolution for 256KM^2, but it won't exactly give in to scrutiny when on foot at human scale. Then again the game is mostly not played from that perspective.

I mentioned this in regards to techniques like megatexturing too, when you scale unique data to large worlds, sizes for any kind of real detail quickly become obscenely high.

 

[Panajev2001a]

You probably meant the characters, but as far as terrain goes:
130M for 16x16km gives you roughly 1.4Meters per polygon. Which is pretty great resolution for 256KM^2, but it won't exactly give in to scrutiny when on foot at human scale. Then again the game is mostly not played from that perspective.

I mentioned this in regards to techniques like megatexturing too, when you scale unique data to large worlds, sizes for any kind of real detail quickly become obscenely high.

The solution is to make MegaTextures' resolution even more obscene .

 

[Laa-Yosh]

You probably meant the characters

Yeah, that certainly doesn't look like a 150K polygon dragon...

I mentioned this in regards to techniques like megatexturing too, when you scale unique data to large worlds, sizes for any kind of real detail quickly become obscenely high.

Texturing terrain (and enviroments) in CGI is one of the hardest tasks too, mostly because there's no room for compromises in quality. We usually resort to screen-projected matte paintings, sometimes on a per shot basis, because there really is no good solution....