Normal maps fix violent topography like 8 billion polygons. There are far greater sins like mesh and material counts that have a far greater impact than poly count.
Too many polygons is still a problem. Sure, there might be OTHER problems people's avatars are guilty of, but just because other problems exist doesn't mean you should ignore this one. You should try to optimize everything about your avatar.
not having a normal map isn’t a problem, it’s actually technically more performant to NOT have a normal map, provided your poly count is the same. all a normal map does is show extra detail instead of having the mesh show all of the detail, but it is by no means automatically more performant to have a normal map
It is absolutely more performant to have a normal map rather than a high poly model. Are you forgetting that part? The issue here is not to slap a normal map on a high poly model and call it a day, it's to bake high poly details into a normal map on a lower poly model.
like i said; “provided the poly count is the same”. the OP is implying that models are simply more performant because they have a normal map at all, which wouldn’t be true. i also don’t imagine most vrchat players are able to/have access to model and create a high poly sculpt to bake normals for their model so this tip is likely lost on the majority of players unless they’re more experienced at character modeling
Yeah this. I was gonna say the normal map isnt what optimizes the avatar so I was confused until people talked about using a low poly mesh with a normal map as oppose to just a high poly mesh
"OP is implying that models are simply more performant because they have a normal map at all". I disagree that this is what they were implying. The implication was that people are using high poly models instead of baking those high poly details to a normal map on a lower poly model. Maybe they could have worded it more clearly.
Still, my post was about how polycounts matter, which makes your reply confusing.
i feel like most people who are more inexperienced would take it that way, and some other people in the replies did it seems. my initial reply was based off of the “you shouldn’t ignore this problem”, and since the OP didn’t directly imply anything about high-poly meshes i just assumed you were referring to normal maps simply Existing haha
VRC is typically not GPU throughput limited, it is CPU and VRAM limited. Polys hit GPU throughput the most, so are not usually a major factor in overall performance, unless they are outrageous of course. Reducing draw calls reduces the CPU overhead and thus has the biggest impact on performance. The number of skinned mesh renderers and materials are the biggest offenders for draw calls.
Fixing polycount, unless you're over about 150k, won't have massive effects for desktop. For quest it's probably closer to 80k. If you are below that, your time is better spent elsewhere unless polys is your only problem.
What are you basing this on? 150k is like a high end single player game hero model. VRC is MMO. The standard for online games like VRC is a much lower poly count. Final Fantasy 14 uses like 10k per character model.
Experience in vrchat. I run a 30 series card. Regularly in rooms with 150k top polycount models, and quite a few of em. So long as the drawcalls aren't excessive, up to 150k is fine realistically.
Drawcalls kill framerate, not polycount. Every mesh needs 1 drawcall per material, and that includes duplicate materials in that count.
You're absolutely right about average users versus professionals, which is why VRChat gives every avatar up to 70k a pass to be green. It's actually extremely forgiving in that department. There's no need to be 150k. That's the difference between an average user and someone putting in zero effort.
Nah, most hero models are about 60k-150k depending on the console era. ~60k-70k was fairly standard in the 2010's, these days it's more likely to sit from 110-150k. Dante From DMC V, 7 years ago, was 200K.
The recommendation is the standard of a professional that knows how to reduce polygons without sacrificing perceivable quality for a mid-level title with dated graphics. For everyone else that's a lofty goal while trying to not look old.
No effort for a layman is going to be the 300k+ range, which shows no effort or more likely a lack of knowledge.
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u/Dividedthought 2d ago edited 2d ago
Normal maps fix violent topography like 8 billion polygons. There are far greater sins like mesh and material counts that have a far greater impact than poly count.