Polycount
Triangle budget for a mesh
Also known as: Triangle count · Triangle budget · Poly budget
Definition
Polycount is the number of triangles in a mesh, the primary measure of geometric complexity in real-time rendering. Engines render triangles, not polygons, so quads count as two triangles. Modern AAA hero characters run 30k–100k triangles; environment props 500–8k; mobile characters under 10k; background scatter often under 200.
In production
Always profile in-engine, not in the DCC. Triangle count in a viewport scene is not the same as the GPU draw load when shaders, alpha blending, and overdraw are factored in — a foliage card with 12 triangles and an alpha-tested leaf texture can cost more GPU time than a 2,000-triangle rock, because overlapping alpha-blended layers force the GPU to shade pixels multiple times per frame. Unreal Engine 5's Nanite virtualized geometry changes traditional polycount budgeting for static meshes, letting artists import near-cinematic-density assets directly, though Nanite doesn't support skeletal meshes, foliage with wind, or masked/translucent materials, so hand-built polycount budgets still apply to characters and vegetation. Stat commands like Unreal's stat scenerendering or Unity's Frame Debugger break down actual triangle throughput per frame, which is the only reliable way to catch a scene where polycount looks fine on paper but overdraw or draw-call count is the real bottleneck.