When is low-poly not low-poly?

Question

When is it considered high-poly?

Answer 1

It's entirely relative: if you're building an RTS, then low poly is probably about 1500 polys for a unit (I can't recall but I believe the zergling from SC2 is around that much). However, if you're building an FPS you're probably looking at 10-15k per player.

There's no one true definition of it: the phrase "low poly" depends on a few different things, all of which are important:

• When the mesh was made
• What system the mesh is designed for
• the shape that the mesh is being used to represent
• other meshes that are in the scene
• etc

These days main characters have upwards of 15k-20k polys which was unheard of back in the days of say, N64. Random objects usually stick around 6k-9k these days.

Answer 2

One of the common definitions these days is that low-poly is the model as in the game. High poly is the source model that's used to bake down normal maps.