What excactly is the polycount of a model?

Hey guys,

I've been thinking about this before, and now for a certain occasion I really have to know. How do you define the polycount of a model or terrain?
I've been making this scene in 3dMax and wanted to know the excact polycount. However, should I then "count" the amount of faces and state that as the polycount? or the amount of faces devided by 2? Anyone knows the official "rule" for this?

thanks in advance!

What matters is the number of triangles. Some people state the number of quads as the number of polygons (and technically this is correct since a quad is a polygon), but to be able to compare models you need to count triangles. 3D hardware can't handle anything else than triangles, so in the end it all gets broken down to tri's.

To find the number of triangles in max:
1) Right click the mesh
2) Choose convert to > editable mesh
3) on the modifier tab, expand editable mesh and choose face
4) select all faces and look in the selection rolout of the editable mesh modifier. You'll see something like "152 faces selected" on the botom.

Edit: it is important that you use editable mesh instead of editable poly for checking the number of tri's. If you want to model in editable poly (since it's more powerfull) and still be able to check the tri-count quickly, just put an editable mesh modifier on the top of the stack and toggle the end result.

An alternative way is :

Click Utilities tab->More button-> select "Polyon Counter" from the list
then click OK. Choose your model by clicking on it, a small window shows
the number of triangles or polygons of the model. You can choose to count
triangles or polygons by clicking the radio buttons as well.

I use 3dsmax 7, don't know whether it support lower version.

Thanks alot both of you glad to have finally got some answers lol
-Lennart