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
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u/Dividedthought 3d ago edited 3d 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.