Hello everybody. is there anyone who can tell me whether it is possible to create a high poly game in unity? (Just as we see it in ps3 or x-box) or it only do low poly game?
ps. I’m new to unity
and thanks for the reply
CC
Yes, so long as your target hardware can handle large numbers of polygons. This thread here has some helpful information for general polygon counts and tips on making smart choices of where to place polygons:
http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=58702 
Hope that helps!
hey thanks dude…
it helps a bit
Only a bit, well I would like to help a lot.
Unity is a modern game engine that is optimized and has the potential to make games with the quality of the PS3 and Xbox 360. The key thing to make such games are that you need to make sure the computers you wish to run such a game on can handle it. PS3 and 360 games are heavily optimized so if you are working alone this may get difficult. Basically the games look good but run on lower hardware than most pcs in the 360’s case.
So, to make one you will need a powerful computer yourself to produce it. Unity has all the tools, and Unity Pro 3 will contain all the light mapping and shadowing tools that most current gen titles have. Unity can do normal mapping for detail and has a robust shader system that can allow you to create all the shaders you could ever wish for which is how you get most of the details in games on those systems.
Then using the combination of shaders, normal maps, and proper 3D modeling you can balance your polygons in your scene to run on whatever target hardware you desire. So if its a PS3 /360 game visual you wish to create you can easily create it in Unity, so long as the computers you wish to run the game on has powerful enough hardware to display everything on screen at an acceptable frame rate. Sorry if this answer is confusing, but these are all things that go into making games and producing a “high polygon” game like PS3/360. So yes, Unity can make that kind of a game, you just need a computer powerful enough to make/play it.
This is the complex answer to your original question.
hehe that whas a lot… hehe thanks a lot man. it was the answer I was looking for.
I’m using very high polycount objects (around 1 million), and getting a decent frame count on a two year old mac laptop (100fps.) But performance is based on what kind of textures/material you are using, how many light sources, SFX, whether you are using occlusion culling, shadows, etc…
As the replier said, it also depends on the hardware you are targeting. The above frame rate plows down to 6fps in an iPad, but with better optimization I’m pretty sure I can get it up to 30fps.
Polygon count is really only thwarted by hardware. You can have single meshes with such high counts, but for a game that is not acceptable. You will only be able to display a few before performance will start to degrade in a full featured game. From my understanding most models in games are 1,000-10,000 polygons per character based on the game and how close up the character will be seen. The things that degrade performance is multiple dynamic lights(increased use of resources for forced pixel lighting) number of objects on screen, and number of scripts running and number of textures per object. If an object has two textures it must be drawn by the graphics card twice, so if all your models have 2 materials, all of the them will be drawn twice. They are drawn again for dynamic lighting. So a scene of 5 characters with 2 materials each and 4 dynamic lights equals 6 draws for each 5 characters = 30 draw calls total to the graphics card for that single frame. Or something like that, I am pretty sure that’s how it works. The more draw calls the more work there is for the graphics card. So basically when you are designing your game, you want to minimize textures and draw calls for maximum efficiency. Polygon count is hardware dependent. So take a look at what your target system is.
Yes, you can use 1 million plus polygon models for testing rendering but that is not feasible for a game. Most game companies use such high models to generate normal maps which are used on about 3,500-10,000 polygon models for the characters. Everything else is lower polygon. Search Google for some wireframes of your favorite games and models with wireframe and textures to see how they make them. I think you’ll be surprised how low the models and polygon counts are as the 360 only has the equivalent of an ATI Radeon X1900. A far cry from most graphics cards today.
Well, you are limited to something around 65,000 vertices for a single object. Something OpenGL related I believe.
Though there’s nothing stopping you from using multiple objects to create a single character.
It’s not OpenGL related, it’s because Unity uses shorts for vertex indices.
–Eric
Ah. Makes sense.
I thought I remembered antennaetree mention something about OpenGL a while back. But I honestly wasn’t really paying that much attention. lol
No, It’s not Unity that is restricting the poly count, I believe. In 3Ds Max '011, when I try to export a high res mesh as a 3DS format, 3Ds itself complains about the poly count…
No, that’s the 3DS format, which is way old. The polycount limitation is in Unity, as Eric said.
Although it’s defiantly true that pure polygon count throughput is limited almost entirely by your hardware, there are design decisions in Unity (at least 2.6, haven’t loaded 3.0 yet and evaluated) that have serious implications on real-world high polygon projects. Hardware skinning is not supported, forward lighting redraws objects much more than it needs to by default and scaling incurs a huge penalty. There’s a fair chance of being hit with one of these issues, perhaps more, while doing a ‘high polygon’ project. Unity is a fantastic solution in general, but IMO it has not thus far been designed with this type of project in mind. If you absolutely must have a ‘high polygon’ game (and chances are you don’t), I’d make sure these problems are either gone in 3.0, or not an issue for the project.
Yes Unity can handle High Polys but why bother going so high. There becomes a certain point for example a character model where adding more polys doesnt really make it look any better. Its all about textureing that make a game look good in my opinion, not more polys.