Custom Hair Mesh... What is a acceptable poly range?

[lindaetterlee]

I have been looking over my downloads folder and some of my favorite hair seem to have large poly counts to me. Ranging from 4000-12000 vertices to 10000-26000 faces.  Any input?

Edit: Fubar'd my spelling. I fixed it. Didn't want Elf to have a fit.

[jrd]

I would say 2000 is the upper limit. Most furniture items don't even reach that high, 10000 faces is excessive and signs that the "author" probably stole the mesh from some modelling site, and just ripped it to TS2 without any editing.

Edit: removed spelling nitpick

[lindaetterlee]

Sheesh really? So then those from Xms and peggy are way out of reach lol.

[Flamingo]

Yeah, I'd avoid those hairs as much as possible, if I were you. I would like to know how you're checking the vertices and faces, though. I remember doing it one day in SimPE and can't seem to recall how I did it.

[prattle]

Yeah, I'd avoid those hairs as much as possible, if I were you. I would like to know how you're checking the vertices and faces, though. I remember doing it one day in SimPE and can't seem to recall how I did it.

I'm generally lazy and use SimPE's Mesh Scanner to look; the problem with it, though, is that if a good creator puts several states of an object (like counters) or different versions of a hair mesh for different ages together in one package, Mesh Scanner will lump them all together and tell me, say, that Nouk's messy ponytail hair is over 10,000 polys when it's not actually anywhere near that.

[lindaetterlee]

Ahh. All of those I mentioned are hairs that have toddler through elder meshes. So simpe is reporting the size of all meshes in the file?

[Flamingo]

Well, that isn't much of a problem, really. I compared the hair I have by Rose Sims to hair from other places. The closest one to her least complex mesh was off by at least 5,000 vertices. I shan't be downloading any of their crap again.

[SaraMK]

Check them individually if you want to be sure. No sense in getting rid of a hair you like simply because you are concerned about poly count and can't tell if the hair really is high.

1. Open the mesh file in SimPE.

2. Click on Geometric Data Container, which is on the left side. If there is more than one age group, there will be multiple entries here, so select one (I suggest adult, which can be more detailed).

3. The Plugin view on the bottom will allow you to see Face and Vertex counts for each part of the mesh, or to see an actual preview of the mesh.


While some of the XM Sims hairs are high (in the 2000-4000 range), I have not found any that are 10,000 (although I have not checked all, or even most, of the hairs). I have personally not been overly concerned by the numbers I have seen on those hairs that I have checked. Yes, they're high, but look at it in context... one high-poly mesh is not going to single-handedly destroy your game. If problems are noticed, the worst that will happen is you'll have to remove it.

I suggest quarrantine for newly-downloaded files, and testing them promptly, downloading a picture for every file, organizing your downloads using subfolders, and checking out the poly counts of new meshes so that you have an idea of what you actually have in your game.

[yetyak]

I have just gone through all my hair files and removed anything that is 4000 polys or above.  Add that to a lot with trees and a fence, and there is nothing but lag the whole time I'm on that lot.  Do the same with furniture, too.

[BastDawn]

An even easier way to check how much a hair mesh is going to strain your computer is to look at the file size.  It's less accurate, but that way you don't have to use SimPE.  Maxis hair meshes tend to be around 60 to 120 kb for each age group; a package file with all four age groups included will be four times that amount -- Callum91's all ages Seasons hair converted to males is 378 kb.  The largest hair file I have is a Rose hair at 1125 kb, but it's for all ages, so the Rose mesh for only three ages at 1113 kb will put the most strain on my game.  Most computers can probably handle hair up to 200 kb per age group, but I wouldn't go over 250 kb each (or 1000 kb for all four ages) unless the hair was nice enough to be worth it.

Unfortunately, that doesn't work with objects as object meshes include color files, and that will add a variety of factors to the total file size.