Polycounts

Many people asking about polycounts after i started to mention each object’s poly. I will try to explain what is polycount and what is the importance of it for us.

Each object’s surfaces are made of triangles. We call these triangles, polygons. And number of  these polygons determines the polycount of the object. Everything in your game are made of polygons, objects, hairs, clothes, accessories and even houses. While a simple object has less polygons, complicated objects have more polygons. While a painting have 4-5 poly, a clutter object may have 1000 or more poly. But why this is important ?

There are always conflicts between some creators and users about polygons.Each computer’s performance, graphics and handling is different. So, while some people can use many high poly objects in their game without any problem, some people with low performance computers, may have problem with them such as slowing down their games. For myself, my computer has a good graphic card as it has to be, since i work with 3 d objects mostly. I can use  +20.000 poly objects without any problem.  I even know people who create and use +30.000 polygons. But also some other people thinks even 3000-4000 is high.

Here are some problems you can face because of using high polycount objects in your game. And if you have any problems like these, you might need to check polycounts of items you use for your game.

  • Slowed Down Game
  • Game Freeze
  • System Freeze
  • Slowing Down while zooming and scrolling
  • Graphic Problems

It is also important that how many you have and how much you use high poly items.  If you face any problems, it is better that you use them sparingly. Dont use 20 high poly items at the same time in a lot for example. If it is not mentioned the polycounts of objects, you can check them by yourself. Open the object with sims 4 studio program and go to meshes tab as you see in the screenshot below. You can see the polycount of every item there.polycounts

It is really hard to say what might be considered as ”high poly” or what is acceptable, as we mentioned it really depends on many factors about your computers. But there is one more thing you have to know. Polygons are calculated per tile. You will understand better with an example. For example lets say we have a sofa with 6000 polycount.You may say it is a bit high at first sight. But sofas has 3 tiles, that means they cover 3 grids in game, while a clutter object mostly covers only 1 tile. So 6000/3 = 2000 polygons for 1 tile is still agreeable for all for a sofa. But a decorative object which has 1 tile and has 6000 polygons can be told high poly for some people.

So you need to know specialities of your computer and watch your game to know what you can handle and what not.  If you really like some items but uncomfortable with their polycounts, there are some programs to lower the polygons. Of course when you lower them too much their shape will start to change. I will soon write a tutorial about the easiest way of reducing polygons of objects.

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