So I recently got a set of models and tried using them in my project. To my shock and horror I found one prop to be 27,000 polygons and another one to be 180,000…!!! Shocked, I opened up the models in Maya and what do I find?
The first prop, in Maya has 4300 polygons, but Unity reports it as as over 26,000. So I optimise the model a bit and find 300 polygons I could delete. I save the file as MB and drop that in my scene. Voila, the model now has over 2000 triangles less. So I merge about 80 vertices and go back into Unity and find the model is now another 1000 faces less…???
The second prop, Unity reports it as 180,000 faces but Maya shows only 27,000. What the heck is up with that?
I noticed the model has a “Mesh Compression” option so I tick it just in case, Split tangents on or off… I can’t see anything else that might be of use but neither option made any difference…
So my question to you are two-fold:
Why does Unity import models at 6 times the amount of faces it has in the modeling app?
Most modeling is done in quads, a polygon doesn’t particularly mean 3 sides. If not done in the modeling package, Unity has to triangulate the model on import. Still 6x seems a bit excessive. A lot of smooth curves perhaps?
In Modo it’s just ctrl-t to triangulate a model. Look for the option in Maya and see how many faces it then has. Export that and see what Unity then says.
p.s. Andeeeee is not around to move this to external tools
Ahhh… but see… perhaps I used the wrong terminology again between the polygons and triangles and faces etc. Allow me to clarify:
In Maya:
Edges: 32799
Faces: 11038
Tris: 22911
UVs: 44987
In Unity:
Tris: 180k
I asked this question today because this was the third time I tried using the models in a scene and I kept getting the same inflated values. At one point, when I rotate the model I get a fluxuation of between 29k and 180k. Nothing else in view of the camera. Hell, I moved the prop about 20000m above the terrain. I then modified the cameras cutoff to 10000 and now the parts of the model no longer disappeared as I rotated it, but the polygon count still varied between 22.9k and 180k. This time round, nothing. It stays at 22.9k
The first time I tried using this model in my scene it dropped my frame rate from 120 to 8 so clearly I must be doing something wrong… I just can’t figure out what. I know when I do I am gonna kick myself but WTF?
try weld vertices with a threshold of 0.01 or 0.001 in your 3d app. And give it only one smoothing group (sorry, using 3ds max terminology)
That way your mesh will be one single mesh with no seams or broken edges. Give it a simple diffuse material see how many triangles you get then.
See how many draw calls you are using. After the above with basic vertex lighting it should only be one. Depending on your lighting and shadow set up, and how complex the material and how old your video card is, it’s possible that your GPU has to render the same mesh multiple times to get the final result with fancy materials and lighting, etc.
Actually, no… Did the weld thing, but not the history. Had myself 8 draw calls… Will give that a go. Thanks
note: Weird thing though, when I did the merge vertices command I actually had like 1000 vertices less but the face count stayed the same…
Basically, from what I have gathered from the responses in this thread is that Unity does not have a “tick here to multiply faces by 6 or uncheck to load otherwise” option so the error must be in the modelling app. It was a tad weird because Maya seemed to be the more accurate of the two but at least I know where to look…
