'ObsidianBlk' said:
GPUs crunch a LOT of polys, but you also should know what the "lowest" possible spec machine would be for your game. Sure, todays cards can push quite a lot, but older cards, not so much, so, there is definitely a constraint on poly count to consider. Even for a space game, if it's massively multi player, then there could be hundreds or even thousands of players in a given location, each with a ship, then every visible weapon burst on the screen has some poly data to deal with (yes, extreamly little per weapon, but depending on the zone's activities… ) not to mention any planets, debris, space stations… particles… a lot of data is getting pumped to the card, so, yeah, you should have a general idea of an upper poly limit for your ships.
If you're intending this game to be played on only computers from within the last couple of year, then maybe 100k polys isn't bad… maybe even more.
If you're intending this game to be played on computers as old as ten years, then you may want to limit them to 20k or so.
One thing you may want to look into is getting your hands on models for current games (for instance, you can extract Fallout 3 models with the various tools available for modders) and load them in to see the average poly count is for those models and you can get a rough estimate of the sort of detail you can get away with.
Even if you're limit is very low, however, you can still "cheat" high detail with normal maps (and other advanced techniques). The quick info on normal maps are, you can rough out the major structures of your ship (the "low poly model"), then, in a separate file, continue building up ALL the details you want for your ship… small vents, rivets, seams, etc, etc, and then render a normal map of that high poly model (google is your friend here). Give your game engine the normal map as well as the texture map for your low-poly model, and, BOOM… your low poly model suddenly looks a LOT more detailed because the engine is using the normal map to cheat a lot of the details.
It's good to know that I don't have to worry about poly count at the moment. I've also been looking at different rendering styles and found that there are ways to make distant objects have only so many polygons (or otherwise be only so graphically draining) while having close ones be more fluid and intense.
As far as normal mapping… You're referencing making the model's "frame", and then modeling every fine detail of the model and turning that detail into a material that gives the illusion of such fine detail on a flat 2D plane that is applied to the original model - kind of like they do to add realistic features and etching to modeled guns, for example? Or did I miss the concept?
I'll neve be much of a programmer, but I do understand that it's important to have a grasp of every aspect of the game's design so as to make everything flow.
Normal mapping isn't really a programmer thing beyond it being implemented in the engine. Once the developer implements the feature, all normal mapping (the creation of them, so to speak) is in the hands of the modeler.
I did a quick google and came up with what looks to be a good read on normal mapping and it's concept. Once you understand the concept, the process of creating the normal map is a little different depending on the 3D modeling package you use... http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap
Hope that helps.
