Hello,
What does the term “Low Poly” mean in building terms? I’ve seen it being used multiple times but have no idea what it means. Also, how would I go about making something Low Poly? Thanks in advance!
Sincerely,
DevLtWolfee
Surface UI Developer
16 Likes
Low poly means Low polygon (count), so basically in Roblox that would translate to less bricks. Gives more of a cartoony sort of feel. With Blender that would literally mean low polygon count in terms of the “mesh” of the model.
I’ll find a couple screenshots of low poly builds I’ve done in the past, but one way to discover how to create low poly things would be to just google “Low Poly art” or “Low Poly _____”. 
EDIT: Here’s just a couple low poly things I’ve made in the past:
EDIT2: As opposed to this build which is high poly:
So all in all:
Low poly = fewer bricks
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Alrighty, if you could provide screenshots, that would be amazing.
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That third picture looks so good
Props to not using flat tone lighting and overly pastel colors. Grounded lighting and colors brings more of an ambience, and in general seems to be more tolerable to play in for a longer time.
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How did you create those?
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F3X plugin via Roblox Studio
Huh, is there a tutorial for beginners? Also, link, please.
Honestly I’m literally the perfect person to ask, I’ve got a whole youtube channel dedicated to building tips and stuff, with a couple videos specifically for F3X. The first video on the list (PLUGINS part 1) is all about how to use F3X and kind of talks about low-poly. It also has links to the plugins in the description.
As of now I haven’t made a dedicated video for low-poly, but because of this thread I’m probably going to make one this week.
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If you do dedicate a video to low-poly, let me know because I’m trying to become a 2-in-1 Developer focusing on Surface UI Developing and Building.
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Will do! Happy building
I consider myself to be a low poly builder. Really I just am not able to make detailed buildings =P.
I am also very experianced in low poly modeling in blender which essentially means objects under 8k. You can actually search up a whole gamedev conference video about this.
Low poly just means, creating the illusions of high detail with lower detail 
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What did you use to make those?
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Blender
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How all do I make Low-Poly designs? I’ve tried and failed.
Think simple, is my best advice.
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Ok. I’ll try something.
The way I do it is I keep my increments relatively large.
A basic guideline from me would be don’t change your movement/resize increments to anywhere below 0.25 and don’t change your rotation increments below 10 degrees.
And to practice, you can either google “low poly concept art” and just copy one of those images OR the better, but more difficult, way would be to take a detailed piece of concept art and recreate it in the low-poly style. A quick tip would be to break it down into larger, simpler pieces.
For example I can break the house in the following concept image into some really simple geometric shapes:
The easiest way to remember it is basically build as if you’re just laying out the basic shapes, except with low-poly the end result is pretty much just a little bit more than your layout rather than a bunch of tiny details added in.
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Actually, there’s more to low-poly than just cartoony stuff. In fact, there is a common misconception that low-poly = more cartoony. Technically, low-poly literally just means a lower poly count, and should not be used to describe the minimalistic art style most people in this thread are describing.
Low poly building is a great way to reduce the amount of memory your game uses since it has less triangles than a more detailed build might. This means that using such a building style for your game will be much less costly than using the same style for everything. This has been practiced for years in many, many games inside and outside of Roblox.
Generally, low-poly objects are used to create small “props” in the game that need to be duplicated over-and-over again. With techniques such as instancing, this becomes very viable since they only have to be drawn once. However, it’s also great practice to use it on larger objects such as terrain too, since there doesn’t need to be too much detail with such elements.
Low poly house props. These would be used multiple times throughout the game.
Low-poly windmill. Keep in mind that it looks realistic, but is still technically low-poly.
On Roblox, 100% of the meshes uploaded are also considered low-poly since they are limited at 5,000 triangles (or is it 3,000? Oh well, you get the point.) This does not mean they have to look minimalistic, and many devs have used such low-poly meshes to create super realistic things:
https://devforum.roblox.com/t/question-what-to-do-when-trying-to-design-realistic-games/132641/6
So basically, low-poly =/= minimalistic building style. It’s actually just how many polygons are in a certain model, place, etc. When somebody mentions it, now you know that they might be talking about something totally different.
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This is true for the technical definition of “low poly”, but the low poly art style does result in “cartoony” looking art/builds because it seeks to meet the minimum amount of polygons necessary.
In other words, it’s a lot easier to explain that low poly generally produces a cartoony look because people can physically see that result. Sure, a highly detailed build can be technically “low poly” in terms of the actual polygon count, but unless you’re modelling for an engine other than Roblox that doesn’t really apply.
In Roblox, due to the restrictions of the studio, low poly really does mean less bricks and as a result produces the classic cartoon look.
Otherwise, telling someone that every build in Roblox is technically low poly doesn’t really get them anywhere.
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