Dissecting 3D characters
Characters are a key part of our game. Characters can come in many forms, including humanoids, animals, robots, and more. We can allow our players to play as any type of character that we instantiate in the game. As you would expect, characters are incredibly more complex than most other game objects, such as a building, rock, weapon, or lamppost.
3D Character vocabulary
Working with 3D characters takes a certain level of understanding. Creating these characters is a complex process and has an associated vocabulary. Here are some of the basic terms used when working with 3D characters:
Polygon: You'll remember from geometry class that a polygon is a plane figure with three or more straight line segments. Polygons can be very complex. They are always closed and contain no curves. When using 3D modeling software, polygons are also referred to as faces.
Polycount (short for polygon count): This is an important concept to consider. The polycount is the number of triangles...
