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

[MJP]

On the other hand, it makes a lot of sense to tesselate the terrain with an adaptive, view-dependent scheme. That could add more polygons to the parts that are closer to the camera (player), increasing the detail and variation of the scenery. We haven't seen enough yet to decide but I believe this to be the case, based on simple logic.

That would make a lot of sense, considering how they've been talking having seamless transitions from ground level to outer space.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, it's also instant LOD for the distant parts of the terrain.

 

[Hazuki Ryu]

I see, so it's unrelated to the 30k characters they mentioned, would those numbers seem realistic to you anyway?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

For the cinematics, yes, it does sound reasonable when looking at the models, especially if you can catch a comparison image of the Reach armor and Master Chief in Halo 3.
For ingame, only when you're really close to someone. Then again it's safe to assume that Reach will also have a melee attack.

 

[COPS N RAPPERS]

Don't know if this has been posted before but here it goes anyway.

Halo: Reach is being propagated as the next game to use technology that packs a wallop and this is what is being discussed as being put into the new engine that is being developed for the game. These features were spoken extensively at this years GDC conference with reference to DX11 technology:

-Tessellators with close to 30K characters to achieve cinematic quality features.
-The Hull Shader to patch control points in order to modify the behavioral pattern of the tessellator.
-Domain Shader to optimize performance of the output of the GPU in order to mitigate bandwidth use.

These features allow real-time display of real-time images which are otherwise not achieved making creation of objects in the world easier for programmers whilst saving up on a limited memory module. Silhouette elaboration and terrain rendering whose objects offer a healthy degree of curvature.
All this allows for a visually heavy game in the Halo series. More as time elapses.

http://www.gameguru.in/first-person-shooters/2009/11/the-technology-powering-halo-reach/

hmmmmm, July 11th, i was completely unaware of the existence of this article.

30k seems like a high number, it's a believable number for some games but considering of how many soldiers are usually on screen in many halo games, i think the performance would drop quite a bit.

it does however mention the use of tessellation. (a feature that i think would give it the necessary boost in performance with using such high polys.)

Tessellation was used before in Halo wars, though it was entirely for terrain purposes, and i think that's where my money would be on for Halo reach.

though considering that Reach does run on a completely separate engine than all the other halo games, it's possible to say that feature could quite as well be used on other things too.

with little evidence to support 30k models being used, I did examined the model of lone wolf that bungie posted on their home page a while back, my guesstimate does lead me to believe the level of geometry may be greater than gears of war 2.

same pic but with brightness up 60 percent.
http://i45.tinypic.com/2py9axh.jpg

comparing some of halo reach's captures to gears2's.

original Lone wolf shot from Bungie.net
http://www.bungie.net/images/Games/Reach/vga/Bungie_REACH_1280x720.jpg

Gears of war2
http://screenshots.teamxbox.com/screen-hires/81474/Gears-of-War-2/

Halo reach
http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m49/aerofx/Untitled-5.jpg

marcus fenix in both gears 2 and 1.
http://screenshots.teamxbox.com/screen-hires/81383/Gears-of-War-2/
http://screenshots.teamxbox.com/screen-hires/54420/Gears-of-War/

it does seem to show a bit of a gap.

Ensemble Studios

edit, sorry about that; it's been reedited now.

 

[AlNom]

Bungie used tessellation before in Halo wars

Ensemble Studios

 

[arhra]

Don't know if this has been posted before but here it goes anyway.

It's almost assuredly bullshit. All the article does is take a bunch of Microsoft/DX11 presentations from GDC, and make the baseless claim that all the technology discussed in them will be present in Reach (which is a bit of a stretch when you consider that the 360 doesn't even support Hull and Domain shaders in the DX11 sense...)

 

[E2K]

It's almost assuredly bullshit. All the article does is take a bunch of Microsoft/DX11 presentations from GDC, and make the baseless claim that all the technology discussed in them will be present in Reach (which is a bit of a stretch when you consider that the 360 doesn't even support Hull and Domain shaders in the DX11 sense...)

10MB edram = free Hull + Domain shaders ?

 

[AlNom]

Not at all...

 

[COPS N RAPPERS]

there's a magazine that believe might have the polygon numbers for the characters of FF13.

http://www.siliconera.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/image459.png

here's the link if any can get their hands on it.
http://www.wgn.co.jp/store/dat/4138/

 

[proffesso]

there's a magazine that believe might have the polygon numbers for the characters of FF13.

http://www.siliconera.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/image459.png

here's the link if any can get their hands on it.
http://www.wgn.co.jp/store/dat/4138/

i have this, i'll scan the pages later today if people are interested.


basically its zbrush/maya for models, xsi for anim, custom for effects etc. polycounts are nothing extreme (well, except the guy with the afro, his hair musta been a pain in the ass)

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Posting scanned images is a copyright infringement. Posting up the details would be great though. We only need numbers!

 

[proffesso]

there were no numbers from what I recall

 

[COPS N RAPPERS]

faith from mirror's edge made up of almost 20k?
http://i44.tinypic.com/2ah7ixe.jpg

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Do you even get to see that character? I thought it was a first person game, and the cinematics were 2D animated.

 

[AlNom]

You can see the rest of her body head down, and sometimes behind/side on a couple of the sliding maneuvers I think.

 

[COPS N RAPPERS]

i have the game, you get to see her once at the end of it.

there's a 3rd person hack for the PC version.
http://on-mirrors-edge.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=2827
chances are the model was probably extracted from it.

 

[COPS N RAPPERS]

stuff on the game bayonetta. (under customer stories.)
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www.autodesk.co.jp/adsk/servlet/pc/index%3Fid%3D13695173%26siteID%3D1169823&ei=OyxRS-a5BoTKsAP4juz8Bw&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAkQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dsoftimage%2Bjapan%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26channel%3Ds%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-USfficial%26hs%3DWSz%26sa%3DG

i believe the main character is made up of 23k polygons, though it's a little hard to tell with translation issues.

Original wording-

ベヨネッタのキャラクター全体には 2 万 3 千ポリゴンほどのデータが含まれ体には 100 を超えるボーンが使用されている。

Google translator says-

20,000 Beyonetta character throughout the body contains three data about 100 thousand polygons that are used by more than bone.

MS translator says-

The entire character of bayonetta 20000 3 contains data of thousands of polygons and each of the more than 100 bone is being used.

"bayonetta 20000 3" ......?????

Yahoo babelfish says-

By the whole character of [beyonetsuta] the data about of 23,000 polygon is included and the bone which exceeds 100 is used for the body.

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt

lol, "beyonetsuta"

i don't know, i think i can understand babelfish a little better.:smile2:

 

[ultragpu]

The Kanji 2 万 3 千 means 23k. So yes the model has 23k polygons. They must have used a lot of tris for the hair too.

 

[ultragpu]

So the word is 500k polygons per car in GT5 as compared to 200k in GT5P, I wonder if that's for the photomode or ingame.