I’ve started experimenting with meshes recently and I’ve seen stuff about triangle count and how Roblox has to render and calculate these meshes. Is there a good triangle count prevent avoidable lag in gameplay? Also, is there such thing as a good triangle count or does it just depend on the object that your building?
It depends.
Low poly meshes are good and fit different themes of games with the least amount of lag.
Detailed games NEED high poly meshes. If low poly meshes are in a high poly game (for lack of a better wording), it looks off.
If you use a lot of low-poly meshes, it’ll be the same as using a few high-poly meshes. At the end of the day, it’s up to you. It doesn’t matter what each mesh’s count is, but what the triangle total is.
1 Like
Thanks for your suggestion! I do have one more question: What is a good range for the total triangle count?
1 Like
Because of recent updates, it’s hard to pinpoint an exact number.
There is no finite number and there certainly won’t be. The best thing you can do is “be reasonable” and it should work out in your favor.
Alright, I’ll see what I can do. Thanks for your help!
1 Like
This varies greatly. If your running a game on mobile, there are hundreds of mobile devices that run Roblox. Same with computer. Console is probably the only easy way you can get a definite answer on what poly count works for you. It could also depend on what you would consider playable. Some people consider 30 fps playable, while others need 60. There are also a ton of other factors to account in GPU consumption, such as lighting.
1 Like
Slight correction just to clear the water - MeshParts are instanced, so using a lot of (I’m assuming you mean unique) low-poly meshes isn’t the same as a few (unique) high-poly meshes and the triangle total isn’t the best way to judge if your game is data-heavy or not.
Though
Is pretty accurate. While it’s possible to use low-poly meshes for a detailed game, it usually requires getting creative with your faces or using textures (or usually both). Which of course can take more time and resources than just making it high-poly.
Back to OP:
Just consider your audience and reduce redundancies where you can, test your game with mixes of higher-poly and lower-poly and keep an eye on your Performance window as well as testing in a full server (seriously, test your games!). There are a lot of variables to consider for each game and you won’t find a golden number of faces that you should shoot for for your meshes.
If you need more info on how to properly QA for map performance, you can DM me 
6 Likes
You summed that up perfectly. Thank you!
1 Like
For a cube, 12 is a good triangle count. For everything else: the fewest you can get by with for the look you’re trying to achieve. It’s a simple trade off between visual detail and cost to render it (performance), all else being equal.
6 Likes
To add up to what he said, textures also reduce a lot of lag-to-detail ratio, but do not forget that each mesh and decal (pretty much any uploaded asset) has to load. Which ultimately results into your choice between balancing the game’s GPU requirement and internet speeds.
2 Likes
As it is stated: everything in moderation.
We go for a low poly look so we try keeping our triangle count well below 1000, all parts combined we probably have around 70k in the game and haven’t experienced any issues so far.
1 Like