Question about polys...

[OliviaDupont]

Ok so I have a question about polys...

How much is too much regarding polys for an older computer?

I see some hairs are almost 20k polys. Do I need to avoid them? I know to limit them in my game but lets be honest if you are in game you don't know what the poly is when choosing hairs.

[AlfredAskew]

Theraven's going to swoop in here any second and give you the actual technical low-down, but in my experience super high poly stuff definitely gives me a performance hit. I was getting some serious lag on community lots for a little while, and I discovered several 20k+ hairs lurking in the defaults I used. Removing them helped a lot.
I see much less lag coming from meshes with no transparency though. It makes sense, rendering alpha layers is already a massive drag for computers.

I'm on a Surface Book, running with 32 gigs of ram, an i7 cpu, and an Nvidia 1660 Ti gpu. It's not a top of the line gaming machine, but it's no slouch on the graphics front.
The highest poly hairs probably hurt older computers even more.

I also find that things with lots of polys tend to be less well animated/rigged and very often have pretty awful transparency problems; I imagine because that stuff is usually done by hand in TS2, but that's too time consuming for heftier meshes.

Over all, I think over 10k for a hair is generally unnecessary, and often implies a sloppily made creation; while 20k and up is an instant no from me.

[Hermit Fox]

How much "older computer" do you mean? I mean, computers are often considered old just few years after the release but I think for this topic it's important to know if we're talking about computer from early 2000 or like five years ago since there's a huge difference between them. 

Here's a tutorial for how to check polycount for an object, hair and whatever and what's considered safe amount. But do note that it's very old thread (from 2007!), computers from last 15 or so years can handle more than that for sure, I'd say at least double of those numbers is fine. But of course for your computer and game to run nicely the less you put in the better. There's also Sims 2 Hair Database where you can browse hairs and check their polycounts as long as someone has marked it down, some of them will surprise you - the bad way.

Another way you can figure out what items have high polycount is to search your whole downloads folder for *mesh* (*-marks required) and then set the viewing order by size starting from the largest, check those files in SimPE to see their polycount since they're often the worst items in your game.



The one showing up as the largest for me is one mesh by Cazy, it's available for all ages and both genders so that might explain the size some but it's also almost 33k polys per each age, ouch. If I didn't love it as much as I do I'd definitely delete it. It's actually one of the "I love this too much to let it go even though I know it's bad for my computer " items I have.


On my old laptop that had some low quality Intel crap for graphics card the limit for what it could handle was apparently about 15000 polys, anything reaching that just plain didn't show up; as in the hair showed up as bald so I had to set the limit below that. I still try to keep that as the personal limit but since most hair nowadays is conversions from Sims 4 where the number is creeping higher and higher it's getting harder to find new hairs - unless you allow few to go bit past the limit you set. (I'm not kidding I've seen Sims 4 hair with over 50000 polys and it wasn't even curly hair that would have kind of justified that sort of number!) Generally speaking hairs from for example Nouk, Peggy, Newsea and Raon should be safe to use, some were considered high poly back when they were released (I remember people were shocked one Raon hair reached 12000 polys back in 2008 or so) but for a decent-ish computer they should be perfectly fine nowadays.

[Mrs_MQuve]

It's funny, my  laptop is a few years old and only has 8 GB RAM, and even though I use a LOT of high-poly content (30K+ poly hairs, sexyfeet, smooth hands) I don't seem to get much lag unless I'm on a massive lot with a lot of objects. However, I would NOT advise anyone else to take the risk I do by using so many high-poly meshes, I'm just a glutton for punishment I guess    If anyone happens to reduce the polycount of a mesh I use, I always grab it, though. Unfortunately most of the hairs with low polycounts (and in general, really) being converted nowadays are clay, which don't suit my game at all.

Fox, I just saw a hair on Tumblr somebody converted from TS4 that was 60K polys. My jaw hit the goddamn floor. Granted it looked like one of those hairs that was stolen from IMVU or Second Life, but there is NO way that amount of polys is even remotely necessary.

[AlfredAskew]

It seems like every gpu has its own personality when it comes to what kind of things it likes to render. I feel like some of the other cards I've had jived much better with TS2 fountains (animated, transparent textures), but this one hates it. Meanwhile, it's totally happy with a variety of water and light shaders, which probably would have totally fried the older chips. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Hermit Fox]

Fox, I just saw a hair on Tumblr somebody converted from TS4 that was 60K polys. My jaw hit the goddamn floor. Granted it looked like one of those hairs that was stolen from IMVU or Second Life, but there is NO way that amount of polys is even remotely necessary.

Holy shit There's one Sims 4 mesh I know is like 50k where it's kind of justified since it has a lot of meshed corkscrew curls but then there's also people like Anto who post a basic straight bob and the polycount is 35k and I just can't understand, where does it all go? Newsea posted a similar-ish hairstyle with some extra danglies and they managed to do all that for bit over 13500, or this long hair with bangs; Polycount is under 9700, it's just insane. But anyway, I'm derailing the thread so I'll shut about Sims 4 hairs now.

[AlfredAskew]

Polycount is such an easy thing to rant about. xD

[OliviaDupont]

For the record my older computer is about 11 years old. I can barely play Sims 2 with my 15 GB of downloads as is...and yes I've downsized and that is as low as I can get it and be happy and want to play. I can only play sims when I do play. I can't listen to music at the same time, I can't watch Twitch at the same time. I can go to webpages but it sometimes take a while for the page to load.

[Theraven]

The thing about those high polycounts is that more often than not they're not necessary, because in most cases you can easily get the exact same result with half (or less) the polycount.

Hairs that aren't extremely detailed (and not talking "smooooooth" here, just with a lot of details that would explain a high polycount) don't need to be over 20.000 at all. Most should manage to keep well below, at least if people could manage to keep their hands off the subdivide buttons...

Even corkscrew curls should manage to keep far below 50.000 if meshed smart. The issue is that they're adding too many polys when they're making each of the flat pieces they're manipulating into shapes, because they want those "smooooooth" hairs. Add fewer polys to each of these pieces, and you've got a lower-poly hair that still looks good (and no need to lower in polys later).

[Maya]

Polycount is such an easy thing to rant about. xD

and it would be so good to say oh, these TS4 stuff ...
I had a sorting day today, reviewing my old TS2 stuff. (I'm sorry Digi, but I can't find those eyes ...)
But I found one ... two ... three ... folders in all sorts of places on my machine, full of Sapphire Sims stuff.
There is a deco dining set among them.
Ivan137 @ SapphireSims2_Titanic First Class Dinnerware
60 000 polygons.
I was quickly thrown out of the game, especially when I saw that I could only put it in the middle of the table.
Because of such an object, I will not use scams.



(And even the texture isn't something demanding)