poly count for next gen sword?

[shadowmonkey]

hi alls as the tittle says what would you consider to be a good poly count for next gen sword?It will be an asset in game prob wont be part of a characters weapons.Basicly I need to show off my high to low transfer skills for next gen.

[Ace-Angel]

As per usual, it depends on what you're aiming for. I'll assume for now you mean simple longsword.

FPS Weapon (Hand) - around 1.25K+
FPS Weapon (World) - around 700-
RTS Weapon (W+P) - around 70-
(All values in Tri's)s

Those are blank values since it depends on the sword and how intricate it is as well what game quality you aiming for.
Games like Demigod, while a semi RTS game, can actually sport weapons which are around 200 Tri's in their LOD-0, meaning zoom all the way in.

Maybe if you showed the pictures of what you're planning to do or just giving the general idea.

Also, remember, retopology isn't for characters anymore...

[Elcura]

FPS Weapon (Hand) - around 1.25K+

I hope you mean 1250 and not 125000 or any thing else...

[Ace-Angel]

1.25K tris = 1250 tris...

Notice how I put the point after the one?

But again, it all depends. Intricate weapons which have lots of eyecandy in some high-end games can take upto 3K for a hand weapon in an FPS...

[shadowmonkey]

nice one !!!!!!!!!!!!!im doing the Atlantian Sword from Conan as it stands the bloody thing is 6k having a head bash as its intrigate.

[Maph]

6K for that sword is quit a lot actually. It's a nice looking sword, but it's silhouette isn't all that fancy or complicated looking imho. Most details in this sword can easily be done with normal/spec/gloss maps. I'm guessing you'd get plenty of definition with 1k max. :)

Do you mind posting the wires you've got at the moment?

As far as next-gen polycount goes, try aiming for real world examples.
I mean, you can make a 6k poly sword and have it run by itself in any engine with fancy shaders at about 200+ fps. But how would it respond in a fully interactive environment with other characters, weapons, etc....
Best way for testing this is using UEd, Valve Source, etc... and try to throw it in the game itself, if the game bogs down tremendiously with the weapon, well, something's off. ;)

[Ace-Angel]

For a weapon like that, I would say my previous stats should work nicely.

Normal maps should be doing all the work here, especially for the hilt.

My advice would be head over to TESNexus, download the Nif Tools for Max, Maya or Blender, and see some of the mod weapons on how they are created. Should net you a fair idea...

[shadowmonkey]

sorry alls for the delay ive been away,I tried to retop the mesh with bad results because its made up of 3 seperate objects when you retop as one it blows up,,why?well im not sure maybe its because all three objects are closed meshes and there is prob making one solid retop of out of them?

I have been learning xnormal and found it to work well the reason for the retop was that I could export the high rez and new retop into xnormal for bake as I dont think 3dmax will handle the poly count so making a retop in max would be a task.

Any how here are the final high rez model shots

[Beartastic]

Sweet work on the sword. Max should be able to handle that, just use decimation master on it and you should get down to a much saner count.

Seems strange to me that retopo of the three meshes doesn't work well, but then I haven't done it before. Have you tried merging all the subtools? If they're not subtools and already merged, have you thought about separating them into subtools? If that doesn't help and you wanted to retop in zb anyway then you could just retopo the three bits separately then merge the low polies and fix later.

[shadowmonkey]

Hi HBT yeh I know its an odd thing the retop error and yup they were all merged into one using submaster tried both options with or without polygroups.The idea of retop the three obj seperate is what I was considering but,,,,I have a concern with this and that is that there are seperate elements inside the reptile like ends mouth ( the spheres and teeth).If I retop with them included into the sword guard bit it may have the same results as mentioned earlyer.I guess I will have to try it out.

decimation master I have not used yet so will look into it,
At the moment its all on hold as my PC is dead so no work for now and deff no comicon challenge :((((