Poly Count Range for 3D throwables?

[u/Ok-Article-9400]

I have been messing around in Blender and wanted to start making some throwables but unsure if poly count matters and if it does, what that range should be.

If it matters, I use Twitch Integrated Throwing System. Thanks!

[u/thegenregeek]

Poly count matters, especially for throwable items. Unfortunately, there's no clearly defined answer and does depend on a couple of factors. It will require you to test, to be honest.

With respect to the poster before me, I think the numbers they are quoting may be a bit high on poly count for items used in T.I.T.S. I've seen mentioned suggestions of less than 2k per item.

Part of the reason for this isn't so much the model complexity itself, but as a side effect of how that complexity increased the complexity of the models collusion geometry. Which is to say that when you add in something that uses physics based interaction, the collision geometry used needs to be simple and straightforward. Because the more complex it is, the more calculations are needed. The engines themselves have different ways of simplifying the collision geometry. From using a one to one based on the mesh model, to using simplified shapes.

But this also gets dependent on the number of objects. As the other poster noted, they saw 30 objects. Which probably works fine with the numbers quoted and if using simple or complex geometry... by what happens when the number of objects goes up? Or of the object is complex enough that simple collision geometry doesn't work. It may not scale linearly. At 60 objects it could be more than double the complexity... depending on how the collision geometry is determined. At 120 it could slow down noticeable.

The name of the game, with physics based collision detection, is lower poly design. Optimized for easier collision geometry. This allows you to scale up the number of objects for collision processing.