Modeling Resources

Most important:
CryENGINE Asset Creation Doc (information about LODs, setup, export etc etc)

Polycount guidelines:

• Characters:
  
  • LOD 0: ~9k tris
    
  • LOD 1: ~5k tris
    
  • LOD 2: ~2k tris
  
  
• FP Weapons:
  
  • LOD 0: ~10k
  
  
• TP Weapons:
  
  • LOD 0: 5-7k
    
  • LOD 1: 2-3k
    
  • LOD 2: 1-2k
    

Can't really make any polycount guidelines on env assets. I'd say you shouldn't get over 1k per cubic meter, depending on how big the focus on that part of the model will be. Try to fake as many details with normalmaps.

1,5k for my GONK should be ok i think, it's a quite important piece in the swbf series .

I think that many triangles will be fine since most of the little details will be in the normal map.

I can remember getting pissed so much when the enemy manage to destroy the medic droid and the gonk because in a matter of seconds you are dead without even knowing what happened. So yeah, quite important

definitely. Especially the ammo droids where so important in SWBF. When I player in the ESL the pilots with their health and ammo packs were really important. They could repair the ammo droid and give out bacta for everyone.
Especially in 2on2 matches where there was a lot of camping going on, one pilot was pretty much necessary.

Are vehicles given the same limit as characters or should we be aiming for a different number?

Depends on tbe vehicle. You won't need a lot of polies to make things round because you won't see the detailed parts close up. I suppose 20k would be ok, it's quite large.

20k?! What was I thinking... Seriously, for anyone reading this, go as high as you think you need and then we can take a look at it. For vehicles.

But the actual reason I have come to this ancient place is this:
Now that we have 2-3 characters which don't need a redo I'll define the character budget a bit more:

• LOD 0: ~10k (shouldn't go a lot over that, lower is acceptable for not as detailed or smaller characters).
  
• LOD 1: ~5k
  
• LOD 2: ~2k

Textures:

• Generally, 1x2k map set (diffuse, spec, normal) should be enough.
  
• If really needed another 1k map set (or lower) is acceptable.
  
• Faces should be on their own map set (maybe 512) so we have the possibility to switch them out.

Yeah for vehicles if there aren't gonna be 20 vehicles of that type the polycount can go way higher than characters.
There's only one limit and that goes for space battles. It's good for these spacecraft the tris to be around 20-30k with full cockpit. There are always exceptions of course.

My tactic is go as low as possible without losing the good look of things.

As for texture size it really depends on the size and the amount of details so things doesn't look blurry and details are lost.
I used 2k textures on the snowspeeder exterior and i start to think its a bit low.

As for characters i agree with Ben.
I am interested how many tris are the characters in crysis 3.

One of the characters artist on Crysis 3 told polycount (I even think Leph asked in that thread) that they were ranging from 10 to 15k. They only used one 2k map set for their characters though (except for the nanosuit (4k) and Psycho IIRC).

For vehicles you can't really define anything. As sharky said, try to go as low as possible with tris but keep the good looks (from a reasonable distance).
With textures try and think about how your normal map details will transfer to the amount of pixels you have and adjust according to that.
And always try to keep the pixel/size ratio similar so there are no visible differences in resolution ingame.

The snowspeeder looks alright to me in terms of resolution. It's not like you usually get very close to it, only when entering. After that you'll be in the air.

But you'l be in 3rd person in air right? So it will still be pretty close.

I'd say the 3rd person is still at least 3-4 meters away, more than on the screenshots Sharky posted at least.

I'll put this here, as it's a modeling resource.

The "agent_baseman" proportions really irritate me to the point of fixing it:



On the megacloud in the same folder as "agent_baseman", called "DT_Basemale"

Yeah, I just quickly modified a template from polycount for the general shape. As I sculpt all of my characters I modified the basemesh in ZBrush so it wasn't that irritating for me.

Anyways, good work and thanks for sharing!