Polygon count info

Description & Information Guideline: Polygon count info

Appears in: Body Shop - All, Build Mode, Buy Mode, Game Mods, and Neighborhoods & CAS Screens

Possible Assessments

Category	Title	Description
Body Shop - All	Polycounts incomplete or inaccurate	The polygon counts for this upload are incomplete or missing. Make sure to list the exact polygon counts for all new and modified meshes. Do not provide estimates or rounded figures.
Body Shop - All	Polycounts correct	The polygon counts look complete and accurate. Nice!
Build Mode	Polycounts incomplete or inaccurate	The polygon counts for this upload are incomplete or missing. Make sure to list the exact polygon counts for all new and modified meshes. Do not provide estimates or rounded figures.
Build Mode	Polycounts correct	The polygon counts look complete and accurate. Nice!
Buy Mode	Polycounts incomplete or inaccurate	The polygon counts for this upload are incomplete or missing. Make sure to list the exact polygon counts for all new and modified meshes. Do not provide estimates or rounded figures.
Buy Mode	Polycounts correct	The polygon counts look complete and accurate. Nice!
Game Mods	Polycounts incomplete or inaccurate	The polygon counts for this upload are incomplete or missing. Make sure to list the exact polygon counts for all new and modified meshes. Do not provide estimates or rounded figures.
Game Mods	Polycounts correct	The polygon counts look complete and accurate. Nice!

General Guidelines

Polygon counts (sometimes called "poly counts") are a very important aspect of creating meshes for all Sims games. Polygon counts which are too high may cause issues with game performance and stability for downloaders, especially those with lower-end computers. For this reason, we need to know the polygon counts of all new or modified meshes uploaded to MTS.

For uploads with multiple new/modified meshes, we require exact polygon count(s) for all new/modified meshes in the upload.

For TS3 and TS4, we require exact polygon counts for all LODs (Levels of detail).

There are two ways to fulfill the requirements to list all polygon counts:

The information is automatically detected by the Upload Sorceror
The information is manually added to the upload description by the creator during the upload process

Both are equally acceptable, but at least one option must fully list all accurate polygon counts (not rounded figures or estimates) for all LODs.

Polygon counts may either be listed as actual polygons, or as a count of vertices/faces.

Automatic detection

For many kinds of uploads, this information is automatically detected by our file X-Ray system. This is shown in the description stage of the upload sorceror, specifically in the "Archive Information" section (below title and description). Like so:

Screenshot of the MTS Upload Sorceror, showing the "Archive Information" section, with different polygon counts listed for three different LODs

If this information is detected, it will show up like this. If the information shown is complete and accurate, then you do not have to add the same information to the description of the upload. If the information does not appear complete and/or accurate, then you must add any corrections or additions to the text of the upload description.

Manually adding

The X-Ray system may not detect polygon counts on all uploads. We are continuing to work on expanding the system, but as it stands currently, some TS2 and TS3 sections may not have the information detected. In this case, the uploader must add the polygon counts to the description of the upload. In the upload sorceror, that should like something like this:

Screenshot of the MTS Upload Sorceror, showing the "Title and Description time!" section, with different polygon counts listed for three different LODs

My upload uses the same polygon count for all LODs, do I still have to list them separately?

Yes. Also, MTS has guidelines around polygon counts and LODs, and we generally require meshes to actually have different LODs. See the Polygon count guidelines for details.

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Examples

Polygon counts in description, TS2

Polygon count: 759

Vertices/faces in description, TS2

Faces: 1564 Vertices: 3678

Estimate

Polycount: around 15k

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