Hey all --

Just looking for your input here.

I'm working on a very detailed castle set right now for Poser -- What point does it become too many Polygons for a model?

Reason I ask is right now the castle is not even complete and at 68734 Polygons.

I can optimize it afterward of course too, which I intend to, but looking to make it as easy as possible, for this is not an easy replica to rebuild in Gmax with all the detail.

Thanks for your input, I want it to be as user-friendly as possible for when I release it in the Marketplace. 

IMVHO ...

< 10K polys = low

10K-100K polys = medium

100K = high

Suggest that if a prop has more than 100K polygons ...
... that it be broken into multiple parts.
But that's just MVHO ... I could be wrong.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

P.S. Your project sounds interesting ... can you post a pic? :blink:

I would think with enhancements that poser and DS4 would be able to handle more than in the past.

I recall seeing similar poly numbers listed for the last 5 years or so. V4 was like 100,000 polys or so, wasn't she?

I am not sure what you are using to make the prop (I use lightwave), but the simple answer is: it depends on the people using it. I make very high poly props because I want the detail.  If you want to distribute the prop to a lot of people using different systems, then I have two suggestions:

1. As Geep said, use multiple parts
2. Distribute a bundled prop in a low poly version and a high poly version.

You can also distribute different textures for use with the low and high version (larger texture size for the high poly). It is all about the user and the capabilities of their render system.

If I made the Model then it has too many Polygons.

Thank you all for your honest inputs ---

I like the idea of breaking down the loading of the prop, I'll have to do that for the castle.  I'm one that's into highly detailed items personally, and my standards are set too high for the community, not wanting them to be disappointed in the release of the item. 

I guess the way I'll do it is optimize after, and break down into loading of individual areas of the castle exterior for renders or all at once, since it's scaled to Poser People. 

I'll also do the high end textures and low, that sounds like a very good idea too. 

Thanks for everyone's feedback

Are the 'extra' polys for detail or size?  If you are doing fine detail with extra polys you can get some good results by sculpting onto a subdivided version and creating displacement or normal maps that can be applied to the base mesh.

I've taken a model - a tree covered in ivy - to half a million poly's in Poser before now. other than it became sluggish to move round the model, I had no issues rendering it.

Quote - I've taken a model - a tree covered in ivy - to half a million poly's in Poser before now. other than it became sluggish to move round the model, I had no issues rendering it.

That's ok ... Just so long as it wasn't poisen ivy. :lol:

its too high poly if you have polygons that are wasted.

V4 is 70k polys, ~100k with hair. 

if you model a pair of shoes or a tank top for her, they shouldnt be 50k polys each.  that said, if an outfit consists of a highly detailed lace-up corset, boots with laces or a dozen buckles, etc - then polycount will go up. theres no right or wrong anser - just look at your mesh and ask yourself 'do these polys/edge loops need to be there?'. ie: are they necessary to give the final shape in Poser, or are they superfluous. can the detail be achieved with displacement maps/normal maps instead?

also keep in mind that displacement maps are not necessarily a no-brainer alternative to mesh detail.  in some cases rendering a 4096x4096 .TIFF displacement map on a model can use more resources than just adding the detail to the mesh.  it depends:  there is no universal right answer, you need to evaluate every mesh on its own.

With 6GB and Pro 2012 64 bit I managed to load (but not to render) a model from the Stanford Repository which had 10 million tris.

I normally model thinking only in a low level way about poly count. I optimize afterward, removing polys that I don't think I'll need while trying to not make too many wasteful ones in the first place ;)

I still have problems keeping polycount as low as I think it should be even though I've been modeling for a couple years ;). I want the thing to look good when I render it. And I despise boxy angles and jaggies...lol. However, that's just me. I think the bulk of the Poserverse wants light and lower poly so more can fit in the scene. I could be wrong about that, but I don't think I am. And Geeps estimation of low, med and high poly is a good one to follow. For other apps it doesn't matter quite as much as it does to Poser and DS.

Laurie

It depends what you are making. I make dynamic clothes quite high-poly because it makes a difference in the material room in Poser. Static props I try to keep low-poly. Sometimes I use Meshlab or Blender's decimate modifier to simplify the mesh if I still think it has too many polygons.

Quote - its too high poly if you have polygons that are wasted.V4 is 70k polys, ~100k with hair. 

if you model a pair of shoes or a tank top for her, they shouldnt be 50k polys each.  that said, if an outfit consists of a highly detailed lace-up corset, boots with laces or a dozen buckles, etc - then polycount will go up. theres no right or wrong anser - just look at your mesh and ask yourself 'do these polys/edge loops need to be there?'. ie: are they necessary to give the final shape in Poser, or are they superfluous. can the detail be achieved with displacement maps/normal maps instead?

also keep in mind that displacement maps are not necessarily a no-brainer alternative to mesh detail.  in some cases rendering a 4096x4096 .TIFF displacement map on a model can use more resources than just adding the detail to the mesh.  it depends:  there is no universal right answer, you need to evaluate every mesh on its own.

I was waiting for this excellent point to be made - thanks, Gabe!: same goes for textures, which actually take a bigger chunk out of your available resources than polys, (is my understanding).

Some know my opinion.

All poly's have to "DO" something in 3D space.

If a poly does not "DO" something in 3D space it is pollution.

Allways remember that texture is what you see.
A mesh is just a wirefreme to hang the texture on.

Texture is what we see.

Quote - Some know my opinion.

All poly's have to "DO" something in 3D space.

If a poly does not "DO" something in 3D space it is pollution.

Allways remember that texture is what you see.
A mesh is just a wirefreme to hang the texture on.

Texture is what we see.

To a point. If it's too low you may as well just be making game meshes. Go play a game. Not good for rendering artistic images ;).

Laurie

Vilters sometimes I wonder if you wouldn't be happy with the primitive sphere.  probably the low poly one.  Just add some displacement and you have a beautiful 3D girl. (fully dressed)

Love esther

Oh ladies, are we on a short string this evening :-)
Ha-ha- Ester, I might just do it. :-)

Poly distribution is far more important than Poly count.
Poly count is a hype. Nothing more, nothing less.

Texture is what we see.

And a texture does not mind, nor care, how many poly's are behind it.

As long as there is a good poly distribution behind it.

If you are like me and don't like/trust poser's smoothing feature, you might want to err on the side of a few extra polys.   10k for a simple box with chamfered edges is right, isn't it?

he he

Quote - Some know my opinion.

All poly's have to "DO" something in 3D space.

If a poly does not "DO" something in 3D space it is pollution.

to a point.  theres no point obsessing whether your prop or clothing item is 4800 polys or 4000 polys. or whether your base figure is 70k polys or 55k polys.

with modern computers an extra 5-10k polys here or there is pretty irrelevant. keep in mind we were rendering these same figures (in some cases higher poly) over a decade ago on computers far less powerful than the average modern cellphone.

im not saying dont pay attention to your polycount - but would you rather have a merchant spend hours shaving a couple hundred polys off an object so that 'none are wasted', or putting that time towards making a better texture, or another product?

Just out of interest I took a look at my Daleks.  The NSD, which is probably the most complex in terms of surface detail, has 69034 polys.  The Mk1, arguably the simplest looking variant, has 39504.

If I'd modelled the neck mesh on the NSD, the poly count would be much higher so I used Displacement.  The MK1 mesh would be ridiculous, since it's like a fine tea strainer.  :)

My only real gripe about high poly models is triangulation.  Almost double the poly count for usually no gain.  It proper bugs me that some cars I bought almost choke my ancient system because they're too damn bloated.

To reiterate what others have said, it depends on the model and its usage. All in all, there are some generally agreed best practices.

If your model will occupy very little screen space (say, less than 10%), 70K polys may be a bit excessive. On the other hand, it's not uncommon for a "hero object" to have greater than 100 - 200k polys.

I usually try to "get the shape to read properly" using the fewest polys because, ideally, the scene should be heavily populated to provide the detail we're accustomed to seeing in the real world. As an example, when I look around my workstation, each object I see can be modeled with less than 4000 polys. Some may be crude but will occupy very little screen space. In that case, it's not so much about the accuracy than the impression. A human on the other hand, I would budget 30-50K polys with extra detail provided by ZBrush.

It's all about exploiting the shortcuts and catering to the strengths of the rendering system. Personally, I'm a huge fan of balancing poly weight / smoothing /subDs with textures and displacements.

As far as your castle is concerned, low poly for long shots, medium polys + textures / displacements - perhaps broken into modular sets for interiors and backgrounds. Otherwise doubtful that the castle would be the "subject", so err on the side of less.

As an example all my City Block sets are under 100,000 tri's or 50,000 polygons.

Just trim, trim, trim, until the detail starts to suffer, then back off.

You have to allow the average user room to put some characters in the scene.

Tom

Here is a link to my first city block set, to give you an idea of what is possible with careful modeling.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/movie-sets-city-block-one-for-poser/81486

One thing to keep in mind, is that the render engine doesn't really care how many polygons it is, to a point. Everything is bucket and pixel based at that point, and the calculations involved to render it are more important than the mesh density.

A low poly mesh with diffuse, bump, displacement, and a normals map could actually take longer to render than a mesh of higher density and a single texture map.

Like others have said, you have to consider all of that.

Exactly:
The render engine does not see or look at poly count at all.
It does not matter.

But Poly count and textures consume memory and slow a PC (or MAC) down

Polycount is invisible but the textures are visible.
So I prefer a lower poly count but more and better textures.

Texturs are rendered, textures are visible.

So from the past and into the future, I prefer a lower Poly count with high resolution textures.

The render output is always better off with better textures, and a  good bump and displacement combination.

to add to all this if you are producing content for this site if i remember right there is a limit to the zip file you can upload? so long as you can get the mesh and textures under that limit alls good :-)

Of course polycount isn't invisible.

That's why, despite all its other great new features, Genesis' oversmoothed "too low" base mesh is highly problematic.

Your average "hot chick" with average muscularity and average body-fat can indeed get by with very few polygons.

In this case 17.000 polygons.

The hair was also manually reduced by about 75% of it's original polycount.

In this case 43.000.

Displacement maps are simply not an equivalent alternative to replace polygons.

As Blackhearted said, displacement maps come with a cost.

Poser 9 and PP 2012 on a modern machine hardly notice polygon count at all anymore.

Of course it's impractical to model every last detail like skin pores and veins. That's where bump and displacements maps are good.

But low-res game meshes are just that: Meshes specifically designed to work in a game environment where you hardly notice sculpted details.

Nothing I'd like to use for Poser where it's all about static renders.

As for architecture modelling, try to emulate Stonemason.

He really hits the right balance between polygon count and texture size.

I can load complete photorealistic looking citys in Poser without my OpenGL preview noticeable slowing down.

Quote - One thing to keep in mind, is that the render engine doesn't really care how many polygons it is, to a point. Everything is bucket and pixel based at that point, and the calculations involved to render it are more important than the mesh density.

A low poly mesh with diffuse, bump, displacement, and a normals map could actually take longer to render than a mesh of higher density and a single texture map.

Like others have said, you have to consider all of that.

This is true only if you don't need ray tracing. The scanline renderer does not need to see the whole scene, so big amounts of polys won't slow things down that much. But if you start to shoot rays into the scene, you need to check the entire scene, not just your bucket.

So, if you like reflections, ray traced shadows, AO, SSS or GI you will have to be aware of your polycount.

... and DreamlandModels stuff really looks impressive. I don't have one of his models yet, but I think I will use one of the Movie Sets in the near future. Good to hear that they aren't that poly-heavy either.

Correct Bantha.
And for stills, Poly count can be as high as needed for the detail.

For animations however, I prefer to keep polycount under a very tight control.

And I allways render under Bb's sphere, with IDL and gamma corection.

I fully agree that you need High Poly figures for close up stills.

I completely disagree that you need 70.000 Poly's for a average figure render that is 5" high on a modern monitor. That is a typical sales argument from a vendor that ran out of arguments.

Do I use a double deck 90 passenger bus to take my single kid to school?
I could yes. :-):-):-)

I prefer my good old bike. :-)

Some prefer to model everything in the object.
Ohters (like me) prefer displacement maps.

My rendered eyes do not care, ony the visible result counts.
And what do I see?
A rendered output.

Attached Link: Pixar Presentation

Photorealism is still very expensive when it comes to render time. If you just want to do a movie which looks more like a computer movie, you will most probably save lots of render time if you can do it without ray tracing. And seriously - you won't get photorealism with low poly models either.

Quote - My only real gripe about high poly models is triangulation.  Almost double the poly count for usually no gain.  It proper bugs me that some cars I bought almost choke my ancient system because they're too damn bloated.

IMO, I wouldn't worry about triangulation unless you were doing a dynamic clothing item or for some reason you absolutely need a triangle.

Joe, there's one more thing about game models: you might have a ton of things that need to be on screen and you need the whole screen to render at at least 30 FPS, if not 60 or higher. 

there was nothing wrong with V3, V4's polycount. dropping to 17k polys was a step backwards for morphers.

and displacement maps are great for detail but costly in terms of rendering at high resolutions. normal maps are less so, but dont displace the mesh. depending on what you are making it may be less costly (and look cleaner) to just have the detail in the mesh than to do it with a displacement map. like the forend of this 870, for example.

the entire thing is around 5k polys and the type of resolution i make for Poser. theres a lot of detail youre not seeing such as the bolt, lifter and follower.

Sorry, didn't want to confuse you. That was the Vicky 4 17k LOD mesh. (Converted by me to the SP3 shape)

Genesis is a little "better" with 19.000 polys.

Yes, still way too low for my taste.

But I think most gallerie visitors wouldn't be able to spot the difference anyway, especially when she's posed "in action" or partially clothed.

As with V4, ease of use, ease of content creation and marketability take precedence before any artistic concerns, so I don't have any hopes that we'll ever see a proper HiRes version made by DAZ.

I searched my entire cloth runtime library and found one(1) clothing item above 20K.
So at least if we speak about clothing it appears that if you can't do anything useful under 20K + normal/displacement maps you are in the wrong business.

Things might be different with castles and the like so I did another search in the architecture folder.

This time I found 20 item between 20 and 50k, one item was 89K (I have much more architectural items).

So if your piece is already 68734 polys you are in for a tough sell.

It is not about what Poser and the computer can do its about what the users want.

^i was referring to the actual genesis in DS4. 19k polys then :P

its a step backwards in terms of morphing since to create clean, advanced morph shapes you need mesh density. a super low res mesh and sub-D isnt going to cut it, youll usually end up with doughy-looking morphs.

I agree, Blackhearted. I've done quite a few morph sets, and without density, there isn't always a lot you can do other then broad general things, especially with faces.

The key is poly optimising, reducing polys where it makes no difference, and adding more where they are needed.

Unless you have a lot of modelled in detail, arcetecture typically isn't too bad, polywise. (I did the morph set over at Daz for Stonemason's fantasy castle.)

what the users want? most users arent even aware of polycount. many successfl merchants (i wont name names) have had very high polycounts in the hundreds of thousands (even as far back as 2000) and AFAIK noone has complained.

my Irina Adventuress outfit sold very well, never received a single complaint: with watch and glasses its roughly 100k polys.
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2255575
of course that was modeled in Rhino in NURBS, then converted to a mesh - so the polycount was not as optimal as id have liked. nowadays my polycounts are pretty low and optimized - that said its mostly just for my own benefit since i hate wasted polys and as each year passes i get more and more critical of my own meshes. other than that, not many other people notice/care.

conversely, i see many items in the MP that would benefit from a slightly higher poly mesh and/or more mesh detail. on a modern PC you are not going a rendering slowdown from an extra couple thousand polys on an item but you certainly will notice if you do a closeup render with a low-poly clothing item... or if all your detail comes from disp maps and your customer renders with disp mapping disabled.

these shoes are 4k polys each. they render excellent with no disp maps needed, no smoothing issues, no jaggies. could i have made them lower poly? sure. i can destruct them down to <2k polys easily. but why? to satisfy the 1% of mesh nazis that mostly model their own stuff anyway? at <2k polys they wont render as well in closeups and if someone turns off disp maps theyll look like crap. on the typical modern >4 core processor do you really think 2k polys are going to matter? and dont bring up the 'if i have 50 vickys in a scene and theyre all wearing shoes those 2k polys x50 add up' -- because thats another niche example.

Blackhearted,

We need to separate clothing, architecture and figures. Up to 100K is not too much for a figure. With clothing is is different you can use a lot of clothing in a render it adds up.

"most users arent even aware of polycount"

Don't be so sure about that never underestimate your customers. I have a good friend here that is a technically proficient modeler (Modo-ZBrush) and an accomplished artist too but he complains that he never sell his models -always several hundreds k, more than few times.

BTW your Irina Redux was magnificient, I must have her. ;)

"I have a good friend here that is a technically proficient modeler (Modo-ZBrush) and an accomplished artist too but he complains that he never sell his models -always several hundreds k, more than few times."

this is likely because of failures in 'poserization', poser-specific features, theme and promotion.

i know a LOT of professional modelers who at a glance would think they would take the poser market by storm, but the reality is they would create one product that wouldnt sell well and then they would run screaming back to their cubicle.  this isnt all about technical modeling proficiency:  thats only about a third of content creation.

"this isnt all about technical modeling proficiency: thats only about a third of content creation."

Not altogether clear, care to expand upon that?

I am speaking as one who is contemplating content creation. I like to model, and texturing too. But to be forced to make an endlessly number of brainless morphs and pose items puts me off.

that modeling the item is just the tip of the iceberg.

just off the top of my head here are a few things many pro modelers that think 'oh creating content for poser is so easy' dont consider (and this is just for scenery, clothing and figures are way more complicated):

lets say you want to make a 'Subway Station' scene.

-poser's smoothing is incredibly annoying to model for. youll either have to specifically design your mesh to look good with poser smooth polygons enabled (either breaking edges or adding very tight supporting edge loops), or disable smooth polygons and make a somewhat higher res mesh. either way 90% of models that look good in some 3D app like 3DS wont look anything like it in Poser once rendered.

-everything needs to be UV mapped - and well, in order for addon creators to be attracted to it. unlike an object rendered in Max where you can just drag and drop materials.

-textures need to be made, shaders need to be set up, tested, etc. file dependencies need to be checked.

-the item needs to be 'poserized'. ie: imported in poser, shaders loaded, crap like doors and windows and handles and knobs will be expected to move/turn, it will be expected to be the proper V4 scale, etc.

-supplementary content will be expected. lighting, camera angles, poses for vicky/mike specific to the scene, etc.

-youll need to render/composite promos for Poser.

-youll need to then set up shaders for D|S, and create promo renders in DS as well.

-youll need to package the product, write the readme, test it, create product promo text, etc.

(im sure ive missed some things)

not to discourage you or anything but modeling the subway station is around 1/3 of the work. people have NO IDEA how much extra work it takes to make something for Poser. the typical 'pro modeler' used to just making game levels or something will bleed out by the time they create a full poser-ready set.*

Quote - ^i was referring to the actual genesis in DS4. 19k polys then :P

its a step backwards in terms of morphing since to create clean, advanced morph shapes you need mesh density. a super low res mesh and sub-D isnt going to cut it, youll usually end up with doughy-looking morphs.

I'm theory crafting here, but if you could choose how certain areas sub-d and by how much, it might work better than it does now.  But gene as is isn't capible of that sort of thing.

partial subdivision usually results in a pretty messy triangulated mesh with smoothing issues. i am not a big fan.

Quote - I can optimize it afterward of course too, which I intend to, but looking to make it as easy as possible, for this is not an easy replica to rebuild in Gmax with all the detail.

Thanks for your input, I want it to be as user-friendly as possible for when I release it in the Marketplace. 

I have a question, how do you get a gmax model into poser? gmax doesn't export to credible/useful formats such as .3ds or .obj (have tried many max scripts out there with very limited success).

I use blender/carrara for my poser models, but I am much more efficient with gmax since I use it for other game addons and would love to use it for poser also.

Blackhearted,

ha ha thank you that was pretty instructive, yes, you definitely put me off. :( Modeling is no problem I'm pretty fast with that especially when I can use Marvelous Designer and some fast retop. I also love texturing and constructing uvs and normal/disp maps. But then my patience is FIN. Do you expect me to work? In all my life people have paid me to play I'm to old to start now. :)

My recent Vue scene with trees fully loaded counted say 20 billion (20.000.000.000) polygons, thanks to the leaves. It did not load (nor render :) ) in a 32-bit environment.

My largest 3D model is the Angkor Wat Complete Complex by Jerris Hof (hotxjj) available here on Rendo, counting 2.7 million polys over 3910 objects. It's for Vue, Bryce and Carrara but I guess it'll do fine in Poser as well. The product page says it needs over 4Mb (user mem, so: 64-bit) to load.

So: who cares.

In Poser, do not underestimate the effect of morph tagets on poly count!!

Have fun.

Quote - Hey all --

Just looking for your input here.

I'm working on a very detailed castle set right now for Poser -- What point does it become too many Polygons for a model?

Reason I ask is right now the castle is not even complete and at 68734 Polygons.

I think a polygon count in the range of 10000 to 68750 polygons for a castle is still in range. Depends of course on what exactly "not even complete" means; if you have just finished the basement it is quite high, if the only things missing are the screw threads to put the door knobs on, you are still good :-)

Why not make two versions of the castle one with many and one with less polygons? For example the vendor Predatron at daz3d has some figures (for example a toony goblin) in two different versions. That way one can use the low resolution version while arranging the scene, and then use the high resolution version to render (they take the same poses). I think this is a very good idea and fun to work with.