check out ent_decal from manual, kust what you need.

Yeah, but to your people: Are you sure these are In-Engine pics? And not renderd pics like from Cinema 4D?

no, they are ingame from far Cry 2.

The game looks awesome ^^

Wow, that´s great!

The truth is in the middle of what you all wrote. These polygon counts mentioned (3-6 thousand per animated model) are values from old games like Doom 3 (published on 3rd August 2004). This game even supported old graphic cards with shader model 1.x.

In the meantime there were games (like some Tomb Raider games) where the main hero (Lara Croft) came with more than 10 thousand polygons. Today some have even more than the double amount. The latest Lara Croft has more than 30 thousand polygons with all clothing attached:
http://www.planetlara.com/underworld/article0015.asp

But still they can look like they are made out of a few millions of polygons if you add normal maps generated from high polygon models. Even the old Riddick game showed this perfectly:



In the end this depends on your game and the target platform. If you have only one character then it is another story as if you want to render a dozen of them on screen close to the camera. And another fact to keep in mind is how fast the skinning and animation performs. If lots of polygons have to be skinned to a bones-skeleton each frame and if this works single-threaded on CPU then it might slow the game down.

Thanks for that link, Frank, it's quite useful.
Lol!! I don't normally "lol", but a few thousand extra polygons (when you're up to that level) does not necessarily equal more realistic graphics, it's not a big deal, and they come across as overly competitive (and perhaps a bit embarrassed by the success Drake's Fortune picked up while Lara Croft games continue to be "ok").

But besides that, it's helpful to see where the big guns are going at the moment.

Jibb

When making your game think of the scene as a movie and you are the producer. Imagine what the character/player will see (LOD). Alot of single player games are using high poly models but they are being used sparingly and in proper order. You cant just take a handful of 20,000 polygon models and put them directly into a game. Almost every model that I have in my collection which is a very large collection has 3 variations of detail.

For instance the first player screenshot of the arms and weapon. You can make that very high poly because the only thing that exists is the arms and the weapon and the weapon there does not even have to be that high. Just remember one thing though. The more poly's you put into a scene the higher the developers hardware configuration will have to be compared to the players.

There is no special trick for making a realistic model or any magical engine which can produce a higher quality scene. It is in fact just a factor of great artwork. You have to remember that some of these companies have employed some of the best artists in the industry. Great artwork, good shaders and proper lighting will make even a crappy looking scene look like a million bucks if done properly.

For instance I created a scene that I'm working on and its up there in poly's. Its a 1st/3rd person rpg. I have some areas in the map that did not come through the heightmap conversion very well. When I look at a hill and see a pointed 3 sided hill I dont see a hill, I see a nice rock and group of 2d bushes there to hide it from the players view. The art of illusion is nothing more then making players see what you want them to see just like a movie producer.