It depends on too many factors really.  Type of game, type of camera, visual style, hero character, secondary character, random npc, clothing/armor, etc. etc...

I find that anything past 100k really starts diminishing unless you're going for extreme close ups.  At a distant camera like in most action games where you view the full figure of your character anything over 50k is overkill as normal maps can carry the detail very well in that range.

I doubt character geometry will see a huge boost tbh.  For close up lod's, yes they'll be heavy compared to what we have now, but in most situations they'll only see minor increases.

Texture res will likely double or quadruple though and when it comes to game models that is where all your details really come from.

[QUOTE="faizan_faizan"][QUOTE="15strong"]

[QUOTE="naz99"]

By comparison Star citizens player models will have around 100,000 polygons

[/QUOTE]

Excessive much. A normal or bump map would do the trick.

[/QUOTE] Bump Map is sooooo last gen, And it looks ridiculous from a different angle, A polygon model would look the same from every angle, Also you should have said Normal Map instead of Bump Map.[/QUOTE]

You're right, normals do carry most of the workload, but bump maps are still used in tandem with Normal maps.  Even in film when all your high res organic models are using displacements we still use normal maps and grey scale bump maps to achieve the final effect (along with displacements of course).

And honestly 100k still isnt very high.  Normal maps are still absolutely necessary even at that poly count.  In order to get details like pores, fine wrinkes and cross hatching in skin using pure geometry you would have to be working with at least 3 million polygons.

[QUOTE="tagyhag"]It won't matter too much. We're never going to see the progress of going from PS1 to PS2 polygons. 100,000 polygons will not look twice as good as 50,000 polygons.[/QUOTE]

Yeah the biggest jumps have been made.  In-game geometry does have room for improvement, but the returns are obviously diminished.  Animation, lighting and shaders are the areas that truly have room to impress going forward.

[QUOTE="Chozofication"]

I think Kratos in GOW3 is around 20k poly's, so i'd say around 50k poly's is the most any model should ever be. 

Not too long ago I was reading a blog on a guy that's just starting in modeling and he made a 50k model, it looked kind of like the girl in Heavenly sword, anyways this 50k model from this beginner looked really really good.

[/QUOTE]

Most models for the more "realistic" looking characters and creatures actually go well into the millions before being wrapped in a game res mesh.  This has been the workflow for about 8 years now.  Sculpt the model up to extreme detail so you know it looks good.  Then build a game res mesh around it and bake all the details down to texture maps.

And this workflow has become very efficient.  Its amazing what even a beginner can pull off like you said.  

And the good thing is that all these character and creature artists already have experience building models way beyond what gaming hardware can handle.  So they don't even have to learn anything new as the hardware gets better.

[QUOTE="finalstar2007"]

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"][QUOTE="finalstar2007"]

Im a gamer, i just game i dont care for the nerdy stuff :P

seriously sonys presentation when they talked about the specs i was like da fuq all this means da whole time :P.. till they showed UI and the games then im like thats how it should be :P

[/QUOTE] A polygon is a shape, video games are usually built out of triangles, the TC was wondering how many triangles will be used to create the meshes for next generation character models.[/QUOTE]

triangles? wow.. good thing we got developers to make us these things

[/QUOTE]

Its not as bad as it sounds.  It used to be f*cking miserable (long before I got into 3d modeling luckily), but these days we are spoiled.  Its still difficult, but the tools out there are just great.  Trust me, its not like some guy is out there building these models one triangle at a time lol.  That would be terrible!