Basic Game Art Concepts - Game Character Creation with Blender and Unity - page 14

Modifiers like Subdivision Surface can increase the number of polygons in a model, so many
game designers do not use them.
Video game consoles and engines have what are known as polygon budgets , a “highest
number” of polygons that can be shown on the screen at one time. These limitations do
not mean that your 3D models will look less interesting than those of your 3D animator
friends. Quite the contrary—your models will be more efficient.
It is sometimes difficult to gauge how many polygons should go into a model. Often, it
depends on three important factors:
• Importance—how important the model is
• Distance—how far the player is from it
• Interactivity—how much the player will interact with it
Consider the player character from Epic Games' Gears of War , Marcus Fenix, who
clocks in at about 15,000 polygons. He is an important model because he is the player's
character in a third-person video game and will need to act in cutscenes. Indeed, a face
capable of acting will require a lot of polygons on its own—it could be where over half the
polys in even a simple character model are placed. As Marcus is the player's character,
he is the most interactive model in the game; he is the player's avatar in the game world.
Indeed, he will be viewable very close to the screen and seen closely in cutscenes, so he'd
better be his best dressed: 15,000 it is.
A crate or far-away building, on the other hand, can be made for a lot fewer polygons.
Even round objects, like an aluminum can or the scope on a rifle, are often made of cylin-
drical objects with only eight sides. The aforementioned crate can be a simple box solid
with six sides; alternatively, it could have some embellishment to give it character. Again,
this depends on how far the player is from this object and how much interaction he or she
will have with it. The distant building, on the other hand, may be only that six-sided rect-
angular solid with a texture applied to create the illusion of architectural features. There
is no reason to waste polygons on something players will barely see.
The poly counts of monsters and enemies can differ greatly depending on what they
are and the three aforementioned factors (importance, distance, and interactivity.) An
important boss may have a poly count equal to or greater than that of the player, but the
lowest minion may be down in the hundreds or low thousands. If the character appears
only at a distance, the poly count may be even lower. All in all, you must weigh many fac-
tors when deciding how many polygons to construct enemies with. Simple enemies can be
much lower than the player character whereas humanoid ones may be half to two-thirds
of their poly count. Remember that when considering how low to make the polygon count
on enemies, it is hard to tell the difference in quality when they are running full speed or
ducking behind cover.