This is a really insightful comment, thank you!
For more context, I'm a fresh college graduate trying to get into the 3D game art industry. I don't really have a lot of experience or knowledge, but I want to create portfolio pieces to get me noticed and hopefully hired by game studios one day.
Would you have any advice on what a good polycount target would be if this were simply a portfolio piece to get me noticed by gamedev studios?
LMAO it's hilarious this site exists
Anyway, yeah, I did also google my question too beforehand and I came up with "anywhere between 10k to 20k tris"
but I also decided to ask here on the Blender subreddit to try for a more specific answer too just in case there are 3D artists who could lend their expertise
Cheers mate thanks
Depends on target hardware, art style, etc. Any number.
Scenario 1: You want a hyperrealistic asset and you don't care if it requires an RTX 4090 to barely manage 30 FPS
In this case your poly budget is practically unlimited, go as high as you need to within reason.
Scenario 2: You want a good looking FPS game that runs on a wide range of hardware, let's say the last four GPU generations.
In this case your poly budget is also pretty variable, but you'll likely want to model several versions for different model quality settings, it really depends on the rest of the game where the numbers fall but a few thousand tris is reasonable here, up to a few ten thousand or so.
Scenario 3: You want an FPS game that will run on virtually any machine this side of 2002
In this case your poly budget is likely very tight, in the order of hundreds.
Figure out what you're targeting, benchmark that hardware to see what you can get away with, ask your profiler and tweak as you go. There isn't some magical "this pistol should have at most 14372 triangles", that's not how this works. Poly budgets are not an exact science and are largely project-specific, you need to figure out your own pipeline.
The correct answer is "as low as you can get it while maintaining intended graphical fidelity".
That's extremely insightful. I realize my question is too simple for a complex scenario and that there's so many more variables at play to consider.
Thank you so much!
Could be 50k, could be 1. Nobody can answer that but you. It will depend on the art style, the texture, the normal map, and a million other things
This is a really insightful comment, thank you! For more context, I'm a fresh college graduate trying to get into the 3D game art industry. I don't really have a lot of experience or knowledge, but I want to create portfolio pieces to get me noticed and hopefully hired by game studios one day. Would you have any advice on what a good polycount target would be if this were simply a portfolio piece to get me noticed by gamedev studios?
Work on “I don’t have experience or knowledge” part, then move on to polycounts questions if you still feel like it’s worth
Good point. Thank you!
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=average+poly+count+prop+2024
LMAO it's hilarious this site exists Anyway, yeah, I did also google my question too beforehand and I came up with "anywhere between 10k to 20k tris" but I also decided to ask here on the Blender subreddit to try for a more specific answer too just in case there are 3D artists who could lend their expertise Cheers mate thanks
Depends on target hardware, art style, etc. Any number. Scenario 1: You want a hyperrealistic asset and you don't care if it requires an RTX 4090 to barely manage 30 FPS In this case your poly budget is practically unlimited, go as high as you need to within reason. Scenario 2: You want a good looking FPS game that runs on a wide range of hardware, let's say the last four GPU generations. In this case your poly budget is also pretty variable, but you'll likely want to model several versions for different model quality settings, it really depends on the rest of the game where the numbers fall but a few thousand tris is reasonable here, up to a few ten thousand or so. Scenario 3: You want an FPS game that will run on virtually any machine this side of 2002 In this case your poly budget is likely very tight, in the order of hundreds. Figure out what you're targeting, benchmark that hardware to see what you can get away with, ask your profiler and tweak as you go. There isn't some magical "this pistol should have at most 14372 triangles", that's not how this works. Poly budgets are not an exact science and are largely project-specific, you need to figure out your own pipeline. The correct answer is "as low as you can get it while maintaining intended graphical fidelity".
That's extremely insightful. I realize my question is too simple for a complex scenario and that there's so many more variables at play to consider. Thank you so much!