I will use different models for my game. High poly models for secuences and low poly models for the game itself, like programmers do in some game consoles.
If i want to aim this game for PSP and PC, what do you think is the best polycount for high and low models of the game?

For example Final Fantasy X use 3 different models for each character, one for battles, another one for scenes, and another one for the game itself.

Do you think i can use 15000 poly for an high poly character keeping in mind that it will not be moved but the player, it will be used to make cutscenes in different areas?

i would say that depends on a lot of things.
for example if your levels are small and you dont use shaders a lot you can have models with a very high poly count without any problems.
but if you try to make a game with like huge cities, with about 30 people around the player at all times i would suggest to keep the polycount rather low...

At first i planed my levels to be very very big, but i am noticing its not a good idea because i want to use high poly models and if the maps are that big it can be slow... so i think i may divide the map in smaller parts so i can make my models high poly.

Is that a good idea?

PD: I will be using fixed cameras, do you think that will help in the framerate? Is not the same an RPG with fixed cameras than a FPS with fast movements.

The majority of the consoles (like ps3 and xbox360)
use videos for the cutscenes, when not using then you can
see the noticiable low quality compare to in hardware cutscenes

Why not use videos (¿WHD, if you have a PIV 3ghz think) intead of a realtime render

Hm...high Polycount is good. BUT:

If you use, maybe 10.000 Polys or more, then you'll have a very slow game.
Good games like Half Life 2 (Cutscenes with Barney and others) have all low poly Chars. If you have a very good texture, then the polycount is not so important.

Try to use chars with max. 4500 polys. This is a very good polybudget.
The most games use not more then 3500. You can look at the page from Antony Ward. He's a freelance graphics designer in the gameindustrie. He makes 3d models for games, animations and many other things.

Here the link Antony Ward

Theres a Tutorial for making 3d models for games. I recommend to buy his book. Game character developing in Maya. (Maya PLE is also included)

Greets
Schmerzmittel


P.s. Wenn jemand interessiert ist am Modelieren von Characteren. Das Buch von Antony Ward ist nur wärmstens zu empfehlen. Ich habs mir gekauft, und meine Fähigkeiten bezüglich Organischer Models steigt jedesmal, wenn ich eine Figur anfange. Ihr bekommt wirklich alles erklärt. Bis ins kleinste Detail und das von einem PROFI aus der GAME-INDUSTRIE.

Guckt ihr HIER

(Sry for my bad english. I'm german )

The cutscenes and the new games even in consoles using normal maps but if you see that effect you can see in the borders the low polys and in the fill the great effect appear to be more poligons

And I have to many games (how gear of wars) and he using in any scenes videos, in ps3 I don't know but I not see nothing from that console, but in xbox360 is very easy to see when are videos, all the models in screen have a high antialias filter, but the realtime only use x4 and not in all the models

The programmer try to make the video near to the realtime graphics, but not all the scenes are in realtime, why the game not are the same in cut scenes(deep in scenary and the full amount of scenary models) and a play game

I think also the ps3 use the same technique if not why a game goes to use a 20gigas or 50 gigas blueray

hehe, ok thanks, i will try to make some cutscenes with recorded videos at high quality to check if it can be combined with the realtime game. But for PC games i cannot use so many GB so i will have to use realtime a lot, like i said Final Fantasy series use (i dont know about the other games, but i know this game uses that technique because i have bought the game and i have checked the game code by reverse enginering and they have 2 kinds of models, one for the cutscenes and one for the game itself)

Thx Schmerzmittel for the advice, i will try to do lower polygons as possible.