Quake3World

r_maxpolys "600"
r_maxpolyverts "3000"

Does anyone know if those cvars apply to everything being rendered by Quake 3? Does it really only draw 600 polygons per frame?

Yes. 600/3000 are the bottom limits BTW, you're free to increase them.

Maybe a little more explanation is in place.

r_maxpolys and r_maxpolyverts are the maximum number of polygons and vertices the cgame (i.e. the mod) can add to the scene. The scenery that comes out of the BSP is referred to as 'surface data' and is virtually unlimited in size.

So that would put a cap on the number of polys and verts coming from player characters, special effects and such, but not affect the polys used to draw the level's geometry?

What kinda stuff is classes as being generated by the cgame and not the BSP? I mean misc_models and weapons are entities so they count in that limit or do they count as part of the BSP.

My head....

I believe that those limits do not apply to character models/weapon models/level geometry... but rather things like the rl's smoke trail, etc.

Kaz wrote:I believe that those limits do not apply to character models/weapon models/level geometry... but rather things like the rl's smoke trail, etc.

Exactly.

Thanks guys.

As designers do you have a target polycount for models or visible clusters of world geometry?