To measure an objects file size there are 2 ways you can do that, which is with polygons and vertex counts. The polygon count of a game character can go from 400 uo to 40k+, however mobile games would contain less polygons copared to a PC games.
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When people begin to talk about 'Poly Counts' in a game, they will actually be talking about the 'Triangle Count', nearly almost every game is created using triangles not polygons as most modern hardware is built to render triangles more quickly. Also modelling software tend to show the polygon count of any object, however they may be misleading as the triangle count would a lot more higher.
However Polygons can still be useful as models that made up by 4-sided polygons work as well with tools like 'Edge-loop Selection' and 'Transform' which helps speed up modelling. When an object is finally transferred in to a game engine all polygons are automatically converted in to triangles but there are tools that can create a variant of layouts for the triangles, when this process is finally done the artist must always check if the polygons are successfully converted.
Vertex Count Vs. Triangle Count
When it comes to performance and memory you should consider vertex counts, however it is more common to use triangle count when your measuring performance if your an artist, but this doesn't matter too much if the triangles are all connected as 1 triangle has 3 vertices, 2 would have 4 etc. After changing the smoothness, shade and or material of a triangle it is given a physical break in the surface model, this means the triangle has to be duplicated so the model is able to be sent to the graphics card in render-able pieces. However too many changes can lead to a larger vertex count and may slow down performance.
Rendering Time
The name of the final process of creating a 2D image is rendering, this process is comparable to taking a photo or even filming a complete setup in the real world, also there is multiple ways in which you can render these are specialized. However for any polygon based scenes it is preferred for non-realistic wireframe rendering, other ways that this can be done include scanline rendering or ray tracing. The time it takes to render can vary from from a few seconds to even a few days.
Real-Time
The ability to render video games and animations is performed in real life and is processed between 20-120 frames per second, the goal of this type of rendering is that allows you to view information that is possibly visible by human eyes within a fraction of a second. It can also create the highest photo-realistic that is acceptable within the minimum rendering speed which is only 24fps this is the minimal amount needed to create an illusion of movement. There are certain exploits that can be performed to make the final image more tolerable, rendering software can used to create lens flares, depth of field and even motion blur.
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When rendering in non real-time these scenes can have a higher quality than when rendered in real-time, this is mostly done for non-interactive scenes in films and TV. The time put in to rendering a scene for a film/TV can go from a fraction of a second to a day or more, when frames are rendered they are stored on hard disks and can be transferred to optical disks.
When it comes to photo-realism, the basics to do this is ray tracing, however there are other techniques like particle system, light ripples and volumetric sampling.
Rendering can easily be quite expensive due to its complexity of processing, the power a computer needs to process has increased and so has the ability of the computer to use this power allowing for more realistic rendering. TV/Film studios have 'render farms' which allows them to render images faster, the fallout costs for this kind of hardware makes it easier for them 3D animations at home.
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