Polygon Count. A polygon can have many sides and need many points to define it, in order to compare one imaging system with another a polygon count is taken as a triangle. A triangle is processed as three points in the x, y, and z axes, this needs nine geometrical descriptors. Furthermore coding is given to each polygon for colour, brightness, shading, and texture. If you analyse the characteristics of a certain imaging system, the exact definition of polygon count should be collected as it applies to that certain system. This depends entirely on the engine, on the graphics hardware and memory capacity of a computer, and on the specific application. Triangle counts are often less important than shader complexity and the number of pixels rendered. This is because pixel bandwidth NOT vertex bandwidth tends to be the limiting speed factor.
In 3D design File Sizes are a massive limitation, polygon by polygon files get larger and larger. For example when making a game every piece of geometry in a scene included in characters, guns, objects and the surrounding landscape add up to a massive file size. The minimum hard drive space needed for a game just released on the 13/11/07 by the name of Crysis is 12GB. This 12GB is for the finished product available to customers. Not only this it is important to consider the file sizes generated in the production process and the storage space required to store them.
Rendering times are another issue for 3D design as scenes and animations can take days to render. This can be due to poor hardware or software that isn’t efficient. There is a limit for what 3D software can do on current CPUs. This limit is based on memory bandwidth and the size of L1 and L2 caches.
Expense The cost of a 3D design software package along with a system that can handle the software fluidly and render effectively comes at a very expensive price. The RAM, CPU and GPU account for a lot of the 3D work within a system and they definitely need to be above average standards. Overall setting up a 3D design workstation requires a moderate amount of finance.
