Polycount --> webplayer

Unity Engine
1

I am just about to buy a Mac and a license for Unity 2.0.
But… before I invest in it, I would be truely gratefull if anyone could give me a (qualified) estimate of the total poly-count I can expect being able to put in a unity scene that I will imbed in a web-browser.
… And have a stable and not to laggy scene.

I hope someone can answer.

Best regards
Anne

2

That totally depends on the graphics card in question. Unity does not perform any operations on individual polygons, so you can draw as many as your graphics card can handle.

Realistically this is often tens of thousands per frame on some Intel integrated card, up to millions per frame on a high-end card.

3

Thank you for your fast response.

I understand what you say as:

“there a basically no limitation to how much I can put into a scene, however I have to think of the graphics software on the end-users PC.
If the graphics software on the end-users PC are intel integrated, I should aim on making scenes with less than approximately 50.000 polygons”

Did I understand this right?

Best regards
Anne

4

Yeah. It’s worth noting that total numbers of different meshes, and the kinds of shaders you use, and lighting, etc, will have much more effect on performance than the poly count.

If you have 20,000 polys in 1000 meshes with pixel lights and using bumped specular shaders, that will be much slower than 100,000 polys on 10 meshes using vertex lights and a diffuse shader. There’s much more to framerates than polygons.

As far as Unity’s performance is concerned, it’s basically the same for the most part as any other engine.

5

Thank you for your reply StarManta, it has made me a bit in doubt if we are talking bout the same outcome here.
… we are still talking about publishing files to embed in HTML and put on websites here?

I mean “pixel lights” and “bumped specular shaders” sounds like heavy calculations to have to do realtime and on a web-based application…

So this is really possible to use for even showing one item (on a webpage)?

Best regards
Anne

6

Unity web player and standalone games use the same engine. All effects are possible in both, and the performance is the same. (when in windowed mode, web players are limited to about 40-50 frames per second depending on operating system and the browser though).

7

Aras Pranckevicius and StarManta, thank you so much for your replies, they have been very usefull for my further considerations.

Now I just have to figure out which kind of mac I need to buy, to be able to develop with the unity engine…
(hint hint - if you know the requirements for the hardware, please let me know).

Best regards
Anne

8

Unity will run on any modern Mac (and many less than completely modern Macs, too). The deciding factor is the graphics in your game. (Unless you use other resource-hungry apps like a 3D modeler, too) You probably want a machine with a real graphics card - as opposed to a GMA chip - which would rule out the Mac mini and Macbook. MB Pro, iMacs, and Mac Pros are all great options.

Personally I have an iMac (2GHz, 2.5GB RAM) and it is an absolutely fantastic development machine.