UDK asset polygon limit?
Hi im wondering what the polygon and texture limitations would be to import an asset into UDK. If anyone could provide me with information or some links to a site with these details it would be great. Its meant to be a LARGE HERO PIECE btw.
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most important thing is the silouette. Look at what the minimum number of polygons are that are needed for your model to match the silouette and stick to that number. then where needed add in details with normals maps and textures
StaticMesh: 65535 ( 16 bit index)
SkelMesh : 4,294,967,295 ( 32 bit index)
As to why they set that limit, it's probably because 65535 MIGHT not be enough for some crazy characters. The next jump is the 4 million number, since you increase from a 16 bit index to 32bit.
same idea with skeleton meshes allowing up to 4million tris, since in ue2 i beleive they had the same max as static meshes.
It depends. If your level runs fine, it's fine. Performance is a budget, there's no guideline for how many triangles a single asset can be.
If you go over your level's performance budget, you need to start optimizing stuff.
Regarding the roof: Generally I wouldn't model individual tiles. Nobody would probably notice it anyway.
Learn to optimise your modeling then. You rarely see super high poly UDK pieces because you don't need it. Normal maps and some modeling tricks and you should be good really.
Look into modularity and building stuff inside of udk with pieces. Without meaning to offend you, the technical limit would only be reached if your technical skills are poor.
However, if its a building, you should be able to break it up into smaller building blocks to make the whole out of. That will improve your overall performance.
Generally it's better to have a modular approach to your static mesh assets. (i.e. rather than importing the barracks as a single mesh, break it up into walls, floor, roof, etc.) This allows more variation in the buildings, since you can then take those pieces and snap them together any way you like to make the buildings look slightly different, plus the added bonus that you can use those same meshes to create other buildings without having to create a ton of additional assets. Unreal can handle about 2 billion polys in a scene. The tri count isn't what's going to kill your framerate though, its the texture memory and texile density. I would optimize my static meshes and remove any unnecessary geometry, (use normal maps to get the details you need) and when creating the materials, create one master material for the buildings with parameters built in as opposed to texture samples, then you can create material instances where you can quickly adjust the parameters (textures) allowing you to have one material for all of your buildings where the individual textures can be quickly changed. This will also cut down on texture memory (provided the material isn't super bloated with tons of instructions) because each instanced material uses the same draw call as the master material, meaning much less texture memory used. Also, with the textures themselves, remember that not everything needs to be 4096 X 4096. Smaller things can get away with much smaller texture sizes, again saving a ton of memory.
Hope that helps.