Hi all!

I heard here and there something about polygon count for meshes.
I'm making an outfit that includes a pair of boots with a rather complicated geometry, so the poly count rised a little...
They have 49072 polygons, is it too much or is it right? I don't really want to sacrifice my modelling by reducing the mesh.

I've seen worse. Depends on how much other stuff you want to put it. You can always remove polys from areas that don't show (inside the shoe, maybe parts of the sole, flat areas with no curves, etc..)

Just a thought. I've been told that some folks make low poly stuff, and use detailed mats to cournter that...everyone has their own style. Try 'em out, and see if the shoe fits..;)

What are you modeling in?

Is it just the boots that are that high, or is it the whole outfit? I would say 49 thousand polys is way too heavy for a single clothing item, I could see a whole outfit going that high if it's very complex though.

hi without knowing what your boots actually look like, i'd say, about 4000 polys each should be enough. if it is REALLY and ABSOLUTELY necessary for the details, well, ok, add another 1000 for each then. but i am sure that your boots don't need more. pls keep in mind, that polys eat system ressources, they increase render time and can be one of the reasons for freezing renders. yeah, sure, i know how easy it is to get carried away with details - still, pls think about it... ;)

I'm modelling in Hex. It's an outfit that includes a vest, a pant, the boots, some side armor stuff and a sword. Keep cool, the other items are far lighter with polys :D

Here are two pics of the boots.

It's because of the curves i included the polycont jump that high i think.

nice job, vince! pls show us a wireframe-closeup. btw, above you can see an example for 'unneeded' polys. the top on the left has 1363 polys, the other one 5452. if it wasn't for the shoulderstraps, you couldn't tell the difference. and if i'd add some 50 or 100 polys there, there'd be no difference at all... and another 'btw': afaik the new apollo has 40000 polys (!) and yet another 'btw': pls show us the whole outfit (untextured). ;)

displacement maps will obviate some of the polygons in the above boots, which are very nice IMVHO.

while those are really complex boots as you say, I have a couple of suggestions on how to reduce polycount, first off a lot of that detail could be done with displacement such as the seams, creases, and even the rounded silver parts. getting rid of that detail alone could bring down your polycount by a third. also before exporting lower your smoothing rate in hexagon down to the minimum you can without causing too much roughness, remember that Poser tends to smooth far more then your modeler will show so you can get away with some roughness in the mesh. remember for each number higher the smoothing is set you are multipying the polycount by 4

More details for now:

polycount

vest = 7752 polys

trousers = 17656 polys

hipcloth = 8784 polys

boots = 49072 polys

grand total = 83264 polys

and the sword is not modelled yet, i plan too to add an arm strap and an arm cloth, perhaps even a necklace.

So this high polys are not managable in Poser? In Hex, i used a smoothing rate of 2.

looks good, vince! ...and thx for showing it! i've seen worse in matters of polycount, much worse! but for my taste there's still a pretty lot of polys in your work you don't really need. for example: the ring holding the right front of the hipcloth...i wouldn't be surprised if this part alone has more than 300-400 polys, where imo 48 polys (12 segments, 4 polys each) would be absolutely enough. or: to increase the density of polys for the knees is a logical thought, but, in fact, it won't bend better. it just renders slower. i bet you can reduce the whole outfit to - let's say - 40000 or 45000 polys without loosing a single detail, even when you add some natural folds for all objects. (no left-right symmetry for the folds...please!) ;)

Vince, here's a sample of something I'm working on.  To help me decide which level of smoothing to use in Hexagon, and manage my polycount, I imported two versions in Poser, to see what they look like after poser's smoothing is applied. Left piece has 64,000 polygons, and the right one has around 16,000 polygons. Can you spot the differences, and figure out if they warrant the quadruple polycount?

You could remove a lot of polys from these specific areas also - the pant leg in particular, the polys are very small there and there isn't really much reason for them to be.  If you can delete some loops of polys it would probably help quite a bit.

conniekat - i guess the purple one is the lowpoly? If i'm wrong, it sells the trick ;P

pjz - you're right, i've been modelling with too much enthousiasm, and i forgot to check the useless polys i added.

My problem is: i thought about this polycount problem too late, i already rigged, textured and did the morphs for my outfit, and i don't really know if i want to do that once more... Except if that polys number is really too much, i think i will let it like that, but take note of it for my future project.

I will give a try delleting some loops though, to really see if it makes a difference.