I made a post yesterday showing the polygon count of different generations of Daz Studio figures once they are brought into Unity.

In this post I will use some Level of Detail tools and see how low we can get the polygon counts on these figures and perhaps see which ones work the best with creating LODs.

This post will show the breasts of the female as nudity, and thus may be NSFW for some. If that is a problem do not read beyond this point.

I will initially be working with the product Simple LOD.

I am going to start with the oldest Daz Generation here which is extremely bad in terms of polygons and is the least realistic looking.

Michael 3

This is 143444 triangles. It is clear the triangle density is heavily focused on hands, feed, and head.

These triangles are so extreme this would need to be heavily decimated in order for it to be really something we would want to consider using in a game.

It should be noted I am using Simple LOD so in some cases it may not be able to handle this. It is still possible to make better LODs if you can't use an automated tool by using a 3D Modeling program such as Blender.

I told it to Compress over 200% and it turned out REALLY bad. So I will step back, but I want you to see what a failure can look like.

Now if that was really far away it might still work as you wouldn't be able to discern these bad aspects. Yet it is not really workable for what we want.

Here is with Simple LOD set to 50%.

Still not very useable except at a distance.

Here is the same thing but with Simple LOD set to 25%.

That would be useable as long as not close up, but the poly count is still way too high for something like that.

I'm going to jump to the latest generation of Daz Figures.

Genesis 8 Female

Starting with 25% on Simple LOD.

There are still a few oddities in that, but only if you get close up and if you need to do that you can always use an LOD Group and have it use LOD0 (original not decimated) when it gets really close. It'd still be nice to get it lower, but for a humanoid good looking figure 18253 triangles (9126.5 polys) is not terrible.

I decided to step up to 33% on Simple LOD rather than jumping straight to 50%. We want to find how far we can push it and still look good.

There are certainly some bad polys in this. It'd still be fine at a distance but look close to the lip and chin, or to the left of the vagina in this image and you can see some odd polys. There are also some around the under edges of the breasts.

I will do one last Simple LOD on this at 50%.

This one is obvious in problems. It would still be workable for a distant figure, but this one the facial distortion is obvious. Something like this would still be possible to use as long as it is at a far enough distance from the camera.

Considerations

If you are going to use LOD then it is important to remember that blendshapes cannot be preserved by tools liike Simple LOD. If you plan to use blendshapes (morphs in Daz) then you will likely want to be working with an unoptimized figure. This is possible depending upon target machine specifications and how many figures you plan to have on the screen at the same time.

What are good polygon count targets?

Just for comparison I want to show some AAA games over time and what character polygon count specifications they used for their characters.

Genesis 8 Female LOD0: 32736 Triangles or 16368 Polygons
Genesis 8 Female 50% LOD: 11244 Triangles or 5622 Polygons

Neverwinter Nights 1: - 2002
"One thing every content builder and blueprint maker should keep in mind: A PC or Companion should never display more than 10,000 polygons on the screen at a time. This is an absolute worst case maximum. Most PC's will average between 7k to 8k polys. This total includes head, hair, armor, items equipped in both hands, wings, tails, and any permanent VFX."

Mass Effect - 2007
"Sheppard + armor + weapons - ~20,000-25,000 polygons"

So in reality the default unoptimized export from DAZ for Genesis 8 is likely pretty close to the polycounts we've needed since the 2007 time frame, though it is way more detailed in appearance.

The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition
"Geralt of Rivia (Blue Stripes) - 31,021
Geralt of Rivia (default, light jacket) - 26,091
Geralt of Rivia (outfit 2) - 26,088
Geralt of Rivia (rags) - 17,424
Geralt of Rivia (Seltkirk) - 31,624
Letho - 20,027
Lorweth - 15,411
Philippa Eilhart (red dress) - 21,320
Triss Merigold - 24,526
Vernon Roche - 17,496
Ves - 22,791"

Assassin's Creed 3
"Benjamin Franklin - 17,744
Charles Lee - 25,994
Connor Kenway - 28,501
Desmond - 14,934
Haytham Kenway - 19,985"

Batman: Arkham Asylum
"Bane - 25,000
Batman (Armoured Knight) - 21,304
Croc - 20,940
Thugs - 7,000
Up to 25K for main characters"

Borderlands 2
"Captain Scarlett - 13,848"

Bulletstorm
"Grayson Hunt (past/intro level) - 41,534
Grayson Hunt (default) - 43,709
Trishka - 21,122
Victor - 19,116"

Call of Duty: Black Ops
"Frank Woods (full gear) - 19,777"

Dead or Alive 5
"Leifang (C8) - 32,497
Kasumi (armored) - 65,303, weapons - 14,046
Mila - 40,398
Pai Chan - 29,379
Ryu Hayabusa - 30,613
Sarah Bryant - 30,411
Tina (swim suit) - 34,804"

Deus Ex: Human Revolution
"Adam Jensen - 25,953
Yelena - 17,022"

Dragon Age 2
"Arcane Horror - 9,630
Leliana Chantry - 13,870
Hawke Warrior (Female) - 16,690
Hawke Warrior (Male) - 19,364"

Far Cry 3
"Jason Brody - 29,932, head - 17,179
Vaas - 19,369"

Left 4 Dead 2
"Nick - 17,761"

Mass Effect 3
"Bakara - 12,928
EDI (DLC) - 28,831
Fem Shep (Systems Alliance formal) - 17,628
Fem Shep (base armour) - 22,329
Miranda - 18,944, head - 9,378
Nyreen Kandros (C1) - 16,690
Nyreen Kandros (C2) - 19,105
Reaper (Destroyer) - 121,021
Shepard (male, N7 Defender Armor) - 25,440
Wrex - 11,906"

Resident Evil 6
"Ada Wong - 20,368
Chris Redfield - 22,240
Helena - 19,821
Leon Kennedy - 14,358
Sherry Birkin - 15,620, (7,172 for head)"

Splinter Cell: Conviction
"Sam - 25,332"

Tomb Raider (1 - Underworld)
"TR1 - 230
TRIII - 300
Angel of Darkness - 4,400
Legend - 9,800
Underworld - 32,816"

The Witcher 3

Miscellaneous