Polygon Budget

[Michael Neff]

Hello,
I'm creating a small character, about 300 pixels high, that will be
rendered in its own window. I'm trying to determine a reasonable polygon
budget that will allow the character to be rendered in real time on
most middle of the road consumer PCs. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Michael

[robert...@mailexcite.com]

In article <Pine.LNX.3.96.98071...@cronus.dgp>,

This is a tricky question of sorts. Really low end 3D card support less than
1 million polygons per second a high end rig while 3dfx Voodoo2 (champ for
now) supports up to 3 million polygons per second. I'd assume a middle ground
and just cut the Voodoo2 peak in half, creating a 1.5 million polygons/sec
peak rate. Sooooo.... Based on a 1.5mil assumption, I'll guide you through
math.

1,500,000 / 2 = 750,000mil polys --------->Real world performance |
taking into account AI, | Input,Sound,etc. V 750,000 / 30 = 25,000mil
visible polys ----->Assuming a target of 30fps

So really, it depends on how many polygons your character is made of what else
is going on in the active window. These figure are all based on the assumption
that the PC is top of the line. This is important as a slow CPU can be a
limiting factor when polygon budgeting. Hope this helps somewhat.

Rob Santa

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[Hopfotch]

it would beexceedingly kind to even call a 25000 polygon budget "liberal." in
real life, if you want 30fps, you need to divide that number by at least 10.

remember too that the numbers given on the boxes for those cards are forhighly
optimized triangle strips - only one new vertex for each triangle. my
experience suggests that you should take the manufacturer's claimed number and
at least halve it if you want a more reasonable estimate.

in addition, pixel fill can be a factor, though at 300 pixels high, the 25K
polygons would kill you a lot faster than the fill rate would.

scott lee (ixoye)
market advantage consulting

[Guillaume APOSTOLY]

Just an idea: in Unreal (the game from Epic) I never saw scenes over 150
polygons. Still in this game, there's a lot of CPU time spent for IA, sound
and so on that who will not use. I think it depends of some things:
- what do you call realtime ? (is 10fps ok or are you looking for 40)
- what do you call a middle PC ? (a cyrix p200 that is extremly slow for FPU
computing or a PII 233 that runs really good)
- how will your code be optimized ?
For just a character in it's own window, I think that 500 polygons could be
good, for the CPU part, for 3D hardware (if you're using one) Texture
correction and so on, depends of the card. For your information, I made a
basic .asc viewer on 3dfx's Glide, and I was able to rotate a 1500 polygons
formula one with basic lighting effects very, very smoothly, with just C
code.
Hope this gives an idea 8°)

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-------------------------------------------------

Michael Neff wrote in message ...

[robert...@mailexcite.com]

That's not really that liberal of a number. That's the average number of
visible dual textured/shaded polygons in the alpha version of my program and
it currently runs at a brisk 33.7fps. My older 3D Blaster PCI in contrast
would choke on 5,000 polygons. It's really all in the way you program. I'm
not using strips yet either (for that, I'd use probably STRIPE). The Voodoo2
is quite a capable card. Moreso than you'd probably give it credit. Processor
speed can easily drop the visible poly by a factor of 10, yeah. On a high end
PC where the CPU speed is not a limiting factor a Voodoo2 can blaze beyond my
current 2,500 visible polygons. I based my response on what I'm currently
experiencing. Generally, you're not going to be working with 25,000
fullscreen polygons. THAT would bring a Voodoo2 to it's knees. A model with,
say, 10,000 polygons is going to consist mostly of smaller polygons. Keeping
track of all the vertices becomes an issue, but higher end PC's are made for
this really. I'm not advocating high poly counts in a scene for a P90. In
reality, Voodoo2 is garbage on that platform. The Voodoo2 would normally wait
for the P90 to give it more polygons. On my friend's PII however, I know I
could throw more at it and not have to worry too much. Just wait til the
next-gen Rob Santa PS: Now D3D is a whole other issue entirely. ;)

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----

[robert...@mailexcite.com]

150 polygons? I doubt that. Unless you turned everything into wireframe and
counted every individual polygon, you probably saw way more than that.
Someone else on this board scoffed at a 25,000 visible polygons budget for
30fps on a Voodoo2. He suggested that 2,500 was more reasonable for a
Voodoo2. But really... How many times have you seen around 6 enemies on
screen at a time? At 700 polygons a piece that makes 4,200 automatically. And
that does'nt even include the visible polygons for the scene itself. I guess
that guy really didn't do his math. Quake Arena has around an average of 800
polygons per character. Just look at the article is Game Developer magazine
from 2 months ago. These guys at id are'nt really even targetting the new
"Super Cards" like TNT, Savage3D or Voodoo2. Only 2,500 polygons visible.
Hah. Tell me another one. The only game that I can see that would really take
advantage of these cards would be Messiah. We still really have'nt explored
the limits of our new cards. The alpha version my current game is currently
_showing_ ~25,000 dual texture/shaded polygons at around 33fps. Since my
target release date is next summer -> X-Mas `99 I can probably do double
that. Technology is moving fast people. We're not in Virge-Land any more.
Expect more. Because we're getting more. Everyday.

Robert L. Santa
Santa's Workshop

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----

[robert...@mailexcite.com]

150 polygons? I doubt that. Unless you turned everything into wireframe and
counted every individual polygon, you probably saw way more than that.
Someone else on this board scoffed at a 25,000 visible polygons budget for
30fps on a Voodoo2. He suggested that 2,500 was more reasonable for a
Voodoo2. But really... How many times have you seen around 6 enemies on
screen at a time? At 700 polygons a piece that makes 4,200 automatically. And
that does'nt even include the visible polygons for the scene itself. I guess
that guy really didn't do his math. Quake Arena has around an average of 800
polygons per character. Just look at the article is Game Developer magazine
from 2 months ago. These guys at id are'nt really even targetting the new
"Super Cards" like TNT, Savage3D or Voodoo2. Only 2,500 polygons visible.
Hah. Tell me another one. The only game that I can see that would really take
advantage of these cards would be Messiah. We still really have'nt explored
the limits of our new cards. The alpha version my current game is currently
_showing_ ~25,000 dual texture/shaded polygons at around 33fps. Since my
target release date is next summer -> X-Mas `99 I can probably do double
that. Technology is moving fast people. We're not in Virge-Land any more.
Expect more. Because we're getting more. Everyday.

Robert L. Santa
Lead Program Coordinator