Typical polycounts associated with low-res, med-res, high-res

Unity Engine
1

I was importing some models I’ve bought from the asset store in Maya to use as learning references, and I noticed that there was little consistency between poly counts and how they were defined. I.E. one “super-high res” was about 76k polys, while another “low-res” was something like 40k.

This isn’t a specific question. I’m aware that many factors beyond poly count play into a games overall performance, but I’m curious to know different peoples thoughts about what they consider to be good practices concerning poly count.

Right now I am working on an animal model, and before being smoothed and without any fur it is already about 50k polys. But I want it to look highly realistic. I suppose it’s a matter of priorities, right? If I want realistic looking graphics, I have to trim elsewhere to save performance?

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50k polys is pretty much the top-end of where you’d want your ‘hero’ character to be on a high-spec PC game. In most small-team/independent games, your ‘realism bottleneck’ is likely going to come in a different form, be it textures, shaders (IIRC the skin shader they used in Uncharted had something like 11 passes!) or general art skill.

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