what are poly's ?

[GTA_Panda]

i really wanna get into maspping so i need to know the in's and out's haha and the only way im going to get there is by asking right ? so what are poly's and this poly limit ?

[_Rob_]

Poly or polygon is in layman's terms a triangle, the models you see are all made of these triangles or polys. A poly limit is a limit to how many triangles can go into a certain model, so a poly limit of 1000 on a character would give you a GTA VC type character whereas a poly limit, or budget of 10,000 poly's on a character would give you a GTA IV type character. In modding limits don't matter as much but huge models with poly wastage will make the game slower to play on low end machines and each file size bigger, the trick is to use enough polys for a model to look good but not so much that it slows down the game. You may want to take a look around http://www.polycount.com for inspiration and helpful tips as far as I'm concerned it's the best website for 3D artists, from beginners to professional standard.

Hope that helps