Polygon Counts

DrBoots

Hey guys!

So, as far as content creation goes, I come from a video game modding background. In video games, as I'm sure you are all well aware, the objective is to make the model look good with as few polys as possible. Because of this history, I have an unflinching inclination to keep poly counts low in Daz. I recognize that there is a much larger allowance for high poly models in 3d rendering due to the different objectives of the art form, but I'm unable to find guidelines as to what that allowance might be. Ultimately, I know that complex geometry can affect viewport performance, but I'm unsure of how severely it affects rendering speed. Take, for example, a scene with a single model. Will rendering speeds be noticeably different if the model is 10,000 polys vs 100,000 polys? What about 1,000,000 polys?

Ultimately, I guess I'm asking this: What are the "best practices", so to speak, when it comes to poly counts in content creation. Should I be keeping it as low as possible, or is the limit really just what the viewport can handle?

Thanks for any advice you can offer!

Toyen

I think the polygon count entirely depends on what item you are trying to make.

I make clothing, and in the beginning, I did some horrible mistakes. For example, I wasn't that experienced with making normal maps so I made boots with very high poly count so that wrinkles on the boots would be noticable when I could have achieved the same effect with a good normal map.

The best advice I can give you is to load studio, and take a look at some of the items you have and see how dense their topology is. Clothing, hair, props...

This should give you an idea.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with keeping it as low as possible if you can still make it look good I guess, but sometimes, adding more detail via slightly higher poly count does not hurt and might be even required since the items for Daz Studio are hardly ever made for real-time purposes.

Also bear in mind that the limit of what the viewport can handle may differ between you and your potential customers.

mjc1016

The limit is somewhere in between.

Some things to keep in mind...large, detailed high resolution images are more 'costly' than modelled details...at least when it comes to Iray and GPU rendering.  Iray uses 3 bytes per pixel, so a 4K+ image map, normal map, etc (up to 6 maps for various parts of the material preset) so that will eat up as much as or more than a higher detailed model with lesser/smaller image maps. 

Also a mesh that is 'light' in non-critical areas and more 'dense' in areas where details are needed may not have to be subdivided (or only one level as opposed to two or more)...which also be a memory saver.

It isn't really a question of 'how many' so much as 'where'. 

DrBoots

Wow, very informative! Thank you both! I love how helpful this community is.