Basic Game Art Concepts - Game Character Creation with Blender and Unity - page 13

When everything is said and done, the 3D animator will render the image. Rendering
is when the computer gathers all of the geometric data of the model as well as material
information applied to it and then computes how these things would react in the real
world. The output of this process is a final image called a rendering . Renderings are 2D
images and contain no 3D data. When 3D models are animated, the renders of each
frame of animation are stitched together into a movie.
Both rendered images and movies can take hours, days, or even weeks to produce.
Some frames of animation in modern movies can take 38 hours to render individually.
Studios use render farms , banks of linked computers rendering at one time, to compen-
sate for the long hours. Once they are produced, these animations can be stored and
viewed easily.
Game artists have the challenge of producing their work for real-time rendered 3D
imagery. For every frame of animation, a game's program must compute the 3D models,
lights, textures, and interactions between game objects so they can be displayed on the
player's screen. To put this in plain English: A video game has to do the rendering tasks
of computer animations and then some as the game is being played! This means that game
artists have to take extra steps to ensure that the game will run smoothly. The first, and
perhaps biggest, way that the game artist can accomplish this is by controlling polygon
count . The polygon count is displayed at the top of the Blender window in an area called
the Info Header. The polygon count is indicated in the Info Header with the title “Fa” for
faces (Figure 1.16).

Figure 1.16
The polygon count
is typically dis-
played at the top of
the Blender window
and shown with the
title “Fa” for faces.