Question about polygons Thread

How can i see how many polygons my model uses? I can nly find the amount of triangles. I'm using softimage mod tool 7.5, by the way.

if you are new to modeling then you should use something with alot more support and tutorials on the net... asking for 3d help on these forums aint the best idea :p

I've found alot of tutorials on this thing and i'm pretty happy with it, but if you're saying that i shouldn't be posting questions on these forums, then you might be right, but i'm sure someone could awnser a simple question like this, no?

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I r gamer emo?

Never mind what Razorb has said dude! People on these forums can be and always have been very helpful when the right questions are asked! I'm sure someone will answer your question soon enough! (unfortunately I can't really help you personally seeing as I use max and have no experience with SI mod tool! )

Don't worry, i have a number of places i can go to ask, don't feel like you need to help me every single time.

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I r gamer emo?

How can i see how many polygons my model uses? I can nly find the amount of triangles. I'm using softimage mod tool 7.5, by the way.

Triangles are polygons.

You have 3 basic types of polygons: triangles, quads, and n-gons. Since triangles are the most basic and everything gets triangulated for game engines in the end, it is more accurate to use your triangle count (someone may say they have 500 polygons, but if they are talking about their quads then they actually have 1000 triangle polygons).

just a tip: why not use the help file for the forum @ the software's site? That could give you a LOT more detailed answers then here.

I have tried the help for the software, and i see pictures of models where they say "1000 polygons, 2000 triangles" or something and i'm wondering how they figure out how many polygons they use. But what your suggesting is that i shouldn't care how many polygons i have and just say how many triangles?

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I r gamer emo?

Ok most of the time when people refer to polygons, you are probably going to be looking at a 4 sided "poly". In order to get a triangle out of a square or rectangle, you need to cut it in half diagonally (giving you two triangles). So you can simply take the number of polygons in your model, times it by 2 and you get your triangle amount.

Occasionally you might have a n-gons side, which is in most cases going to be 5 sided (which you want to avoid as much as possible). But those usually will be broken down into 3 triangles.

Edited by: Spector

Again, triangles are polygons. If someone says "1000 polygons, 2000 triangles", they actually should be saying 1000 quad polygons (a quad/square is ultimately broken into 2 triangles, which is why 1000 quad polygons = 2000 triangle polygons).

If you select an object and hit shift+enter, XSI will report how many polygons you are using broken into quads, triangles, and n-gons, as well as the final total triangle count. Everything gets triangulated in the end, so I only list how many triangles I am using.

Edited by: Cryrid

Ok, so on your little screenshot, do people get thier number of polygons from the line:

Someone wrote: Polygons...... (0 triangles, 6 quads, 0 polys with 5+ parts)

by adding the triangles, quads and polys with +5 prts together? Eg. (4/20/4) = 28 polygons?

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I r gamer emo?

That would tell you the total number of polygons, but at the same time that wouldn't be too accurate since a single polygon could have 3 sides or 300.

So in the cube I posted, it reports 6 polygons:
0 triangles
6 quads
0 n-gons

Below that, it reports how many total triangles it would have after being triangulated (since 1 quad = 2 triangles, it consists of 12 triangles).

So technically someone could say it has 6 polygons, and someone else could say it has 12 polygons. They're both right, but reporting the triangle count is more accurate (it just strikes me as being decieving to report a model as having ____ polygons when you are only counting the quads and ngons, since the polygon count could be more than twice that number).

rules of thumb, use triangles or tris to judge how complex a model is.

Really? I see everyone saying stuff like "Oh it's 300 polys so it's good for the game." Does this mean their using the wrong method? Also, around how many triangles should there be in an average game for a weapon and character models?

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I r gamer emo?

odds are they're talking about triangles because... triangles ARE polygons. There's no "average game". A Quake engine game for the PSP needs a completely different number vs a modern engine for the PC.

Really? I see everyone saying stuff like "Oh it's 300 polys so it's good for the game." Does this mean their using the wrong method?

Hard to tell. They could be using the right method, they just aren't being specific. It's like someone telling you they have 300 coins in their piggy bank. You know they have 300 coins, but they didn't provide you with enough information for you to actually determine how much money is actually in the piggybank. You don't know if those coins (polygons) are quarters, dimes or nickels (quads and ngons). Think of Triangles as pennies. If someone tells you they have 73 cents, you know exactly what they have.

As Friar said, there's no average game model because there is no average game. The common saying on any 3d forum is that its a lot like asking "how long is a peice of string". The answer is 'it depends'. Different consoles/hardware have differet processing power so that a PC can handle more data than a hand held, and different games call for different levels of detail (such as an RTS game where you see hundreds of units on your screen from a great distance away, compared to an FPS game where you are actually down in the action).

Then there's the importance of a unit; a basic common character in half life 2 might have between 6-8k triangles, but a main character like Alyex could have closer to 15k triangles.

Edited by: Cryrid

Well in thier pictures it will say something like "x amount of polys" and "x amount of triangles" and i'm wondering if when they talk about that model and they say polygons, what are they talking about? And i was bad at explaining what an "average game" was to me, in my opinion, an "average game" is half-life 2 for the PC, so your alyx example was helpful. Thanks.

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I r gamer emo?

If they just say x polygons, there's no way to tell what they are referring to. 'Polygon' is a variable just like that 'x' is. Just save yourself some trouble, and say x triangles. If someone asks you how many polygons you are using, tell them _____ triangles.

That makes sense. thanks.

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I r gamer emo?

They're just spouting numbers because it's impressive.

For reference:
Cyberdemon in Doom 3 is 4514 faces (triangles).
Stroggified Kane from Q5: 1242

HL2 used a lot of high poly models, many games use lower poly models & do all the details in their textures.

Personally i hate models that try to get all the niceness into the textures, it just looks too fake.

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I r gamer emo?

frandude wrote: Personally i hate models that try to get all the niceness into the textures, it just looks too fake.

then its done badly
if its done like it should, then you wouldn't notice it

Yes and no. Normal maps have only a limited resolution and graphic cards do bilinear filtering while taping from them ( as otherwise it looks even more shitty ). This resolution limit is always going to be noticeable. Also self-shadowing with normal maps is possible but nowhere near as good as a high polygon solution. It's true that high polygon looks a lot better ( compare a character from a 2-character fighter game against a common FPS monster/enemy ) but they consume a lot of GPU render time. Furthermore normal maps handle certain geometry shapes badly, namely if texture stretching can not be avoided. They are best for rather flat surfaces with next to no texture stretching. Again here there is no final solution. Some games favor higher polygon count on characters reducing the number of actual actors on screen while other games crank down the polygon count and putting all in the normal maps to compensate.

high poly vs low poly with detail textures/bumpmaps/etc. is debatable, it all comes down to what you want to do & how you want it to look.
Alyx from HL2: Cc.gatech.edu
some random soon-to-be-zombified-guy from doom 3: Gamershell.com

Alyx you can tell that her shirt & coat is flat, no doubt about it. Zombie-guy doesn't look flat, but I know it is (I purposely compared two games from ~the same release time, newer games have higher poly models & more detail textures to give even more details in everything). But they were designed to look the way they do. IE Everything in metroid prime is high poly, no bump/normal maps, but it looks even higher poly then HL2 does (the game as a whole):
Wii.ign.com

you shouldnt be modelling with anything more than quads and tris, i would try to avoid having any face with more than 4 sides.

differnt games have differnt standards the game can handle, so tri count always varies, also depending how close things are seen and how many things are on screen, sometimse you will have to ask more specificly if they are refering to the count as tris or quads, usually straight out poly count would refer to quads but not always.

But sorry i have never used that tool. so forget me

Edited by: Freeranged