I want to have up to 4 characters in a scene at one time.

It would always be "indoors", as there won't be any terrain/outdoor scenes. The characters would also be modeled/animated outside of A6, in a third party app such as 3dsmax, and be bone animated.

With the characters that would be animated, I'm trying to get an idea of just how high a polycount each character could have if all 4 were visiible onscreen. I would use LOD, but I want the details of the characters to be as high a resolution as possible.

Which I guess brings me to wonder how many polys can I have onscreen, and still get good framerate when up to 4 characters move in the level.

Without characters in a scene, my polycount might around, say, 7500-10,000 polys. Minimal effects, if any at all. Sprites would be used as much as possible. Few objects would be dynamic, if any. Virtually all actions that would takeplace would be by the characters themselves. The focus is the characters, and would sacrifice scene polys to allow for more polys for the characters.

Thoughts/Ideas?

Typical "hi-poly" characters in games - that can have facial expressions or whatever - are around or over 5000 polys (like Max Payne (2), Lara Croft in Tomb Raider- Angel of Darkness), and the UV maps are larger around the head or any part that should be higher detail, than other parts of the body.

As for "how high" a polycount you could have - if your levels are that simple, with relatively little action, I don't see why you couldn't get up around 7500 or 10000 - but I'd say use LOD also.

Another way to add high detail is to use photographic textures (www.3D.sk has 1000's) - a high-poly character isn't going to look like much without great texture work.

(for example, the "outdoor" project I'm working on now has this character - 982 polys and one 512x512 texture, based on edited photos - it looks pretty good for less than 1000 polys, because of the texture, so imagine what you could do with more polys, if you have great textures to go with it)

Thanks for the input. Good point about textures, and I am already familiar with the site 3d.sk, known about them for about 3 years now.

Normal Mapping - I'm hoping I can get good results in A6.

I think you MAY be misunderstanding my question. When I said the numbers 7500-10,000 polys, I was refering to just the level, not counting the characters.

So, the scene at 10,000 polys, plus 4 characters at 7500 polys each, that equals:
10000 + 7500 + 7500 + 7500 + 7500 = 40,000 polys total visible

40,000 visible polys isn't really huge. also, the more you limit your entity count, the more polys on screen you could probably have at a time (no exact equation, but i'm sure you know what i mean). four onscreen characters? i'm sure a reasonably modern computer could handle them nicely with 10,000 polys each. and if there aren't many details aside from the character onscreen EVER, then i don't see much point in putting the time into LoDs for the characters anyway. i mean, it'll be the same power-pushing for ur pc if they are all far away as it would if they are all close, which should run smoothly anyway. just check yes to mipmaps when you skin them.
this, however, is me rambling on under the assumption that physics for the characters won't be too complex, and that there won't be a lot of per-poly collisions on the actual characters. also, the more bones they have, the slower it will be. and the more animations they have. i think i'm getting carried away with my "advice". i guess you could do tests with subdivided place-holder models with big place-holder textures.
thnx for reading. i'm trying to help, but i gotta admit i'm not the most knowledgeable about this. however, from what i know, with so few characters on screen, you really have lots of room to manouver. look how high-poly characters are on DOA on the XBox. there're only two characters onscreen at a time, but the environment looks great and that's merely last-generation gaming hardware.
julz

As stated by Kaniomi:

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I don't see why you couldn't get up around 7500 or 10000

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If you are only planning having a possibility of around 4 entities on screen at a time, I see no problem, especially in indoor levels with that poly-count. There should be no problem with four 10000 poly models in an indoor enviroment for a 60 fps game, or even above. I wouldn't worry about LOD for an indoor level for obvious reasons though.

Btw, nice art Kaniomi. I have never seen your work before.

Edit: missed this post by bossgator

Quote:

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So, the scene at 10,000 polys, plus 4 characters at 7500 polys each, that equals:
10000 + 7500 + 7500 + 7500 + 7500 = 40,000 polys total visible

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That should work, depending on your programming, ai and stuff.

now what has this to do with Multiplayer?

Nothing.