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

[Laa-Yosh]

For 1 texel per centimeter, a 128K*128K texture gives you 1.3 * 1.3 km, so id probably has about 1 texel per inch or so which is 3.2 * 3.2 km. Still not that big for wondering around in a wasteland using a car... though if they can make the levels non-square, they can get more out of the megatexture.

 

[Panajev2001a]

For 1 texel per centimeter, a 128K*128K texture gives you 1.3 * 1.3 km, so id probably has about 1 texel per inch or so which is 3.2 * 3.2 km. Still not that big for wondering around in a wasteland using a car... though if they can make the levels non-square, they can get more out of the megatexture.

The interesting thing is that, at least according to what I got out of Carmack's presentation and Q&A session, 128K*128K is not the upper bound of what they CAN use, the limit (unless they still have some to-be-removed-one-day hard limits in the editor or in the creation tool) is only the size of the Mega Texture itself in the sense of having a suitably large storage medium.

256K * 256K ? Larger ? Sure at that point there are other questions you ask yourself... is it worth the time wasted to create it, author it, and the space used to store it ? It depends on what you are tying to achieve.

I'd be interesting to hear from id how much time would it take them to go from scratch and build a 256K * 256K Mega Texture (including all the time spent in the various tools until it reaches its final compressed form) though and how big it would be.

 

[Brimstone]

The Codemasters Neon engine powered Operation Flashpoint 2 might have hand grenades modeled at over 5,000 polygons.

Finally, Wafer announced that Operation Flashpoint is going to have more than 50 highly-detailed weapons. In fact, he quickly showed us a grenade that was made up of more than 5,000 polygons. Of course, all this remains to be seen because we've yet to see the game running but considering the great level of polish Codemasters managed to pull off in DiRT using the Neon engine, we're interested to see how Dragon Rising turns out on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 late next year.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/815/815055p1.html

The visual fidelity is incredibly stunning for Operation Flashpoint 2.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/194/465030290_0dd9c1e7a9_o.jpg

 

["Nerve-Damage"]

Some Mortal Kombat Faqs

Mortal Kombat 4 (Zeus Arcade Hardware)

MK4 can output "1.2 million four-sided polygons per second"

Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance (PS2 & Xbox)

Gamespot recently had a MK Deadly Alliance Q&A session with the Midway team. Not many new details were released in the session, but a few of the more interesting ones are that there will be all new fatalities for the characters, not revisited fatalities from the past games. They also said that the polygon count will be between 7k and 10k per character. There was also mention of expanded gameplay modes, especially in single player mode.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

HL2 - Cinematic Mod ~50k polys for Alyx ( ).

How many Polygons did they use to render her nipples? Or is just simple bump mapping?

I find it amazing that Leon has more polygons than most of the characters in Half Life 2! I mean, I thought the characters in HL2 looks better than RE4!

Does anyone have the stats for SSBM?

Also, any numbers for the more technically advanced Wii games (meaning non-PS2 ports)? I'm very curious about the characters in Red Steel, Mario Galaxy, and Brawl.

I recall reading from Epic's site that their characters in Unreal 3 are only made of 5000 polygons with specular and normal maps to give them the incredible amount of detail.

http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/technology/ue30.shtml

 

[Neb]

How many Polygons did they use to render her nipples? Or is just simple bump mapping?

I find it amazing that Leon has more polygons than most of the characters in Half Life 2! I mean, I thought the characters in HL2 looks better than RE4!

Ya it is all polygons, clothes, body, nipples ('giggles'... ) including teeths and tongue, and the hair is made of several sprites (as in so many other games)!

I could check it out in XSI or perhaps not.

About RE4, I wonder what the non key characters polygon count are since in most games they are lower than main character and key characters.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

I heard the regular enemies are made of around 5000 polygons. It was straight from Capcom's mouth. It was around the time when they were talking about porting the game to the PS2.

I wonder how many were used on the El Gigante creature as well. That sucker was huge.

 

[Cuthbert]

Deathrow (SouthEnd Interactive / UbiSoft, Xbox)

Highly detailed characters, modeled using more than 55 bones each for life-like movement, and up to 7,000 polygons each for a realistic character shape.

http://www.southend.se/games/deathrow/index.php

Like the 64 Megs of unified memory that we can decide exactly where we want to use those Megs and allowing us to have 1024x1024 textures on the bodies of the characters and 512x512 on the faces. The hard drive allows us to stream the characters from it.

http://interviews.teamxbox.com/xbox/455/Deathrow-Interview-SouthEnd-Interactive/p3/


Kingdom Under Fire : The Crusaders (Phantagram / Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox)

heroes (main characters): 10000 polygons
other characters: 3000 - 4000 polygons

http://www.kuftc.com/eng/Game/feature.asp


The canned Boss Game Studios game (Xbox)

This info is from the Xbox version.

Cars were 25000 polys (highest LOD), 4 textures/poly.
Base texture
Reflection map
a texture used to compute a fresnel term
Shadow map
Specular highlight (This was encoded in the alpha channel of the reflection map)

Most of the backgrounds were 2 or in some cases 3 textures/poly
I've measured peak in game polygon counts as high as 30M/sec.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=847

 

[Iron Tiger]

I think I'm most amazed that Mario in Super Mario Sunshine is only 1500 polys. That was the figure given for the highest LOD model in Super Mario 64! It's astounding how much better modeling got with skinning.

 

[Quaz51]

Gant bridge in GTASA - 16000 polygons LODs mesh included

Locust in UE3 demo - 5287 polygons (source model for normal map - 2M polygons)

http://upsilandre.free.fr/images/character_creation2.jpg
http://upsilandre.free.fr/images/character_creation3.jpg




Daxter evolution

 

[Fafalada]

For 1 texel per centimeter, a 128K*128K texture gives you 1.3 * 1.3 km, so id probably has about 1 texel per inch or so which is 3.2 * 3.2 km.

Thing is though, texel/inch resolution is not exactly perceived as high-res these days. And the PR was all about how we shouldn't use additional layers to create micro details.

But yea, the world likely isn't square, but on the other hand, it also isn't flat(or heightmapped terrain), so total surface area could be considerably larger then the bounding rectangle would suggest.

Anyway, back on topic, I guess I can add this to the mix:
DTRacer (PS2, 2005)
Cars :
Base mesh ~12k poly (max LOD)
Volume Shadow mesh 4-5k Vert (dynamic shadows are not stored as actual polygons, hence vertex count)
Stages:
~200k polys

IIRC Deano knows SH2 polycounts, maybe he can contribute that? I remember some high poly boss he mentioned once...

 

[Megadrive1988]

I dunno if anyone can find some data for this, but I always wanted to know how many polys were used in this offline rendered Samus model from Spaceworld 2000:

has to be more than the Samus models used in Metroid Prime 1 & 2 on Gamecube and even the just-released Prime 3 on Wii.

 

[Capeta]

Locust in UE3 demo - 5287 polygones (source model for normal map - 2M polygones)

You are aware that the Locusts are characters in Gears of War right? BTW posting huge pictures are not allowed.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, but the actual models used in the game look quite different from the version they've used for the first UE3 demonstration. Makes sense to differentiate between the two.

 

[Capeta]

Yeah, but the actual models used in the game look quite different from the version they've used for the first UE3 demonstration. Makes sense to differentiate between the two.

I don't think it makes any differnce since the human characters in GOW uses twice as many polys as that UE3 Locust. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual GOW Locust models are comprised of 5K polys same as the UE3 Locust demo. Whether they "look" the same isn't of concern.

Wretch - 10,000 polygons with diffuse, specular and normal maps
Boomer - 11,000 polygons with diffuse, specular and normal maps
Marcus - 15,000 polygons with diffuse, specular and normal maps

 

[Quaz51]

IIRC Deano knows SH2 polycounts, maybe he can contribute that? I remember some high poly boss he mentioned once...

Things that interest me

 

[DeadlyNinja]

I dunno if anyone can find some data for this, but I always wanted to know how many polys were used in this offline rendered Samus model from Spaceworld 2000:

has to be more than the Samus models used in Metroid Prime 1 & 2 on Gamecube and even the just-released Prime 3 on Wii.

That Samus footage uses prerendered graphics, none of it is realtime.

I think I'm most amazed that Mario in Super Mario Sunshine is only 1500 polys. That was the figure given for the highest LOD model in Super Mario 64! It's astounding how much better modeling got with skinning.

Are you sure? I could have sworn the highest LOD model in Super Mario 64 uses 700 polygons. Maybe you're talking about the giant 3D Mario head from the opening? I wouldn't be surprised if that was made of 1500 polygons.

 

[archangelmorph]

That Samus footage uses prerendered graphics, none of it is realtime.

Thanks for that little nugget of information that really didn't add anything to the discussion nor answer the question originally asked..

 

[Betanumerical]

I would be really interested in the Warhawk's in warhawk and the max poly's in SSD:HD.

Also Killzone 2 character models, which are meant to be more then one whole level in KZ. Do we know the polycount for levels in KZ per chance?.

But I doubt I will ever see those numbers .

 

[xatnys]

That Samus footage uses prerendered graphics, none of it is realtime.

I dunno if anyone can find some data for this, but I always wanted to know how many polys were used in this offline rendered Samus model from Spaceworld 2000:

http://www.playerschoicegames.com/metroid01-big.jpg


has to be more than the Samus models used in Metroid Prime 1 & 2 on Gamecube and even the just-released Prime 3 on Wii.

Anyway, I'm guessing you're right. With the newest Metroid Prime, though, poly count is likely less of a necessity what with all of the tech that supplements today's models (normal maps for instance).