I'm been going through my meshes for clean up and checking polygons and open this mesh MESH_HiphopV2_byRapgirl_05312010 in simpe. I was shock that it was about 61,000. I got it from here https://modthesims.info/d/516810/co...ze-hoodies.html
I don't know anything about rapgirl or the old site it's from. I'm just curious why something this old would have this high of a polygon. I think it's the shoes and the transparency bits on the bottom of the hoodie is causing some of it, but I don't think that's the sole reason.

I suspect it's just that Rapgirl must have had a high end computer with a good graphics card, so using high-poly meshes just wasn't a problem to her. Though it may have limited the number of early Simmers, with more run-of-the-mill computers who could use her CC.

Actually I think this can be a more general problem in software development. Software developers, being computer buffs, tend to have good fast machines, so the stuff they're writing runs well on their computers. It's only when the software is released, and "ordinary" users get to use it, that it is realised how slowly it runs on a "normal" PC. Personally I think that programmers ought to do their work on computers to the minimum spec on which the software is expected to run on. Then they'll themselves encounter the problems of the ordinary end-user, and maybe deal with it properly long before the software is released.

Of course my philosophy suited me as a freelance developer, because I was always an exception to the rule that software developers are supposed to be rich. I always had to watch my budget, and I was often developing stuff for people who had to watch theirs. So, both in hardware and software costs, I was usually choosing the minimum that would do the job.

I suppose I always undercharged for the work that I did.

In a similar vein, I tend to play poorer Sims in "ordinary" houses, because I find them much more relatable than the ultra-rich in their mansions!

I think that game modders with powerful gaming PCs feel much less restrained in resource consumption than companies who still want their product to run on as many computers as practically possible to gain customers. A modder cares less if his mod is played.

I saw this on Euro Truck Simulator and ProMods. The team made collossal maps compared to what was available in the game at the time. When Morroblivion came out (a mod for Oblivion), they disregarded high CPU usage from item placement that needed some precalculations done. There is truly massive mod for Skyrim called Lore Rim that requires a PC from NASA (of today). Often criticism came back to the company for their engine that was not designed to handle things efficiently but sufficiently well.

Developers today prefer rapid releases with iterative development (item placement without precalculations) instead of polishing the product to be efficient. Somehow they have convinced enough customers that this is a good thing, because it improves security and what not. People believe that all change is a continuous march for progress and we must replace old things with new even before they have been worn down. A buy-it-for-life has been reduced to a fringe group.

I think it's often more of a skills issue.

A lot of high-poly (game) meshes would look just as good in a lower-poly version if people could just learn to model properly and understand how the outlay of polys shape the mesh. High poly does not automatically equal quality (very often it ends up with lower quality, because the UVmapping suffers since they also can't UVmap properly,and the texturing suffers because... well, the UVmap, and the animation suffers because the polygons often are unevenly spaced and there's a LOT of polys to keep in check, which in turn makes it harder to get smooth joint assignments).

I've tinkered with meshes well up in the 500k area before, taking them down to maybe 15-20k (or less), and they end up looking quite decent even as lower poly, at least for a game. For some meshes you can cut it down to 1/4, maybe 1/8 of the original polycount before you even begin to see a change - depending on the mesh structure, that is (preferably without using "shortcuts" like Blender's decimate).

Meshes used for design, movies, item previews, etc. (as in not game-related) usually need to be higher poly, because you need to get real up-and-close to the item, and it's supposed to look as realistic as possible.

Game meshes have historically been lower poly, for good reasons. In most cases you can easily get away with much lower poly, combined with detailed (but not enormous) textures. Newer games can often handle more polys - but those games are usually built to handle it, with every trick in the book to hold the game together. However, the sims-games (especially TS2) aren't built for chucking in a bucketload of high-poly items with ginormous textures. TS2 has limits to what it can handle (even with a "supercomputer"). TS4 - maybe it can handle more if you've got a good enough computer, but that game was never really built to be a high-poly game, either.

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Anyway, about 99% of the polys in the mesh above are just for the knee protection and shoes. The actual clothes have a fairly standard Maxis polycount.
The bone assignments are somewhat borked because there's a too low "NumSkinWgts" number (should be 3, but is 1, which wipes all joint blending).
The shoes have a full inside, which probably isn't helping with the polycount...
The mesh itself looks decently made, it's just been beefed up with some extra rounds of polys it probably doesn't need (would be possible to reduce here and there using my favorite method with edge loops - can't stand Decimate, it only ruins the mesh flow...)
By the looks of it, I'm almost assuming this was a conversion from a different game or from a mesh they found elsewhere.

I care if my mods are played. Otherwise I wouldn't upload them.

I always thought the mesh had some unnecessary stuff in it's and that sims 2 wasn't good at handling high poly things because it was older. I didn't know they had really good computers during 2013, though I was a poor high schooler.

So I was right it was the shoes, I didn't expect them and the knees to be where all the polys were at.

I've used some items with quite high polycounts in my game, without it affecting gameplay in any significant way, but there is a difference between using a lot of high-poly items all the time, and rarely using just a few of them. I've often noticed more trouble from large textures (2048px ++) than high-poly items (I had a few spesific ones that would pink-flash because of the large textures, but the game was fine otherwise with nothing else pink-flashing).

I prefer keeping the polycount somewhat reasonable, though. I sometimes reduce the texture size and/or polycount of items if it's an item I think I'm going to use often, and if the mesh isn't too messy to begin with.

I think it's simply a Create as much stuff as I can issue, and high poly looks good. I doubt people who create meshes with so many polys actually play the game, let alone play it with the high poly content they make.

Sims 4 seems to have high poly as the standard. I had a hair that I was trying to convert that was 46K.

I don't get not playing with your creations though. Why make them if you don't want to play with them? XD

There seems to be a lot of people who like dress up and taking pictures in sims 4. I think it's strange too.