Will A 13,000+ Vertices Orcish Armour Crash The Game?

[FastestDogInTheDistrict]

This may seem like a "...really?" kind of question to some, but will an armour of 13,000+ vertices kill peoples' Skyrim? Out of pure curiousity, I produced an Orcish Armour with over 13,700 vertices (welded, skinned, exported without crashing Max, etc.), but would this put a real strain on players' systems?

 

I know some custom armours have even more than this, but I have very little experience with non-Bethesda armours & haven't used many to be able to really judge this...

[Zadil]

Vertices are essentially just points in space, more important in regards to performance is the number of polygons generated through them. Your best bet is to take a look at the standard in-game armor sets and aim for a similar (or slightly higher) poly-count if you want to avoid causing a performance-hit - but of course this will also depend strongly on the user's hardware.

 

There are many ways of reducing a mesh's polygon density, but an effective method is to rely on normal maps for decorative surface details.

[Kaz Aanh]

Daedric armour has 3,5k, generic dragons from 8,5 - 9 k and don't forget you can fight with a several dragons at once.

 

I guess it will work but may cause crashes on some PC's. I've seen some heels with 25k and it crashes for me in the exteriors. So its probably my limit heh.

[FastestDogInTheDistrict]

Hmm... yes, the reason I ask this is that I have much better luck with "Meshsmooth" than "Quadify" in 3dsMax. I can use Quadify to add a much smaller number of vertices, but it does not actually smooth any of the edges out. Meshsmooth is a vertices-bomb, but it gives me smooth edges right away.

[Deedlit]

yes and not, yes if high number of that will exist at game, not if just one, but expect some random ctd´s. also depends quality of texture of that also, but for sure will stress the engine alot.

[Cyndi]

There are ways you can optimize though,

Like deleting parts of the body underneath the armor that aren't seen anyway. 

It helps a bit, but don't expect miracles.

What you take out, needs to be the same for both the _0 and _1 meshes though.

 

Tip:

When you're taking verts/poly's out of a body, do it in an extra "edit poly" modifier. That way you can just copy/paste that edit poly over to the other body mesh for weight slider purposes.

Copy/paste the skin and BS dismember data from another body to finish up so you don't have to worry about any errors.

[FastestDogInTheDistrict]

I appreciate the follow-up here - many thanks, people! Yes, that's exactly the process I follow for making my body meshes as part of armours!