Average Prim Count for Mesh Clothing

[Amoralie Triellis]

Hello! I was just wondering how detailed to make my mesh in terms of what should be uploaded to second life. I know that clothing prims don't affect land impact, but I didn't know if there was a 'sweet spot' for how large of a file the piece of clothing (a dress for instance) could or should be - prim or poly wise.

Thanks!

[arton Rotaru]

The answer to that is always: As low as possible, as many as needed. That's for polygons, or vertices.
A model with to few polygons won't look to good. Double the count and it might look twice as good as before. However, if you double that again, it may look still better as before, but most likely not twice as good. So there will be less and less of a quality improvement with higher and higher polycounts.

You may want to look at some of the polycounts of some main characters of popular games. This will make clear with how little the pros get away, compared to what we see in Second Life sometimes.

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/yes-but-how-many-polygons-an-artist-blog-entry-with-interesting-numbers.39321/page-83

 

[Nalates Urriah]

With clothes we now have Avatar Complexity and Jelly Dolls. It will likely have as much an effect as Land Impact does. So, catch up on that news and adjust your design goals.

The classic avatar has a little over 7,000 polygons. The new mesh bodies I'm not sure about but, they do have more polygons.

My goal is to keep clothes to fewer ploygons than the classic avatar. A blouse in the 2,000 to 4,000 range. But, my design side model have WAY more polygons then the model I upload to SL. I can transfer that detail into a normal map and reduce poly count.

But, poly count is really a matter of what you are trying to accomplish. Use what you need to accomplish your goal. But, render efficiently is important and awareness of Avatar Complexity is growing. Some fashion review sites are now discussing Avatar Complexity as part of their fashion review. So, just as 1 LI furniture is desirable so too will be low Complexity clothes.

 

[Amoralie Triellis]

Thank you both for your informative answers! 

While I've been using a normal map to capture most detail, I noticed in my last dress I really didn't have enough polys for smooth movement in the folds. I think taking your answers into considering I can up the poly detail next time and not go overboard, which is good news!