can unity ios export normal maps to the iphone?

I making an ios game, and I'm with this little character now.
I'd like to know, should I make models with or without normal maps?

 

I'm currently doing the retopo!

This is the character:


normal map: Y / N ?

:-0

 

Without normal maps, just low poly so it looks perfect for the intended size on the screen. That would be about 600 polys, and run smooth and look the same once on device without any normal maps of any kind. This sort of model decimates really well when optimised (max pro optimiser is a good bet). Retopo would probably make it look good when animating too.

Normal maps are a big performance killer if it uses too much space on the rendered display. It won't look very big on a mobile phone if that's your main target, and ipad will appreciate the lack of normal maps in regard to performance.

 

Great! I was going to make the normal maps (y'know, just in case), but I'll make the necessary arrangements now! I'll paint some shading manually and all!
Thanks for the polycount tip! I was aiming at perhaps 800 tris, but I can easily bring it down to 600, I'm sure I'll be very grateful to you once I get to test it on an actual device!
Thank, you're the best!! I'll keep you and the forum updated!

 

800 is fine for a main character though. It's not really a big deal. I'm pushing 10k polys on screen at 60fps (without complex shaders) and 30fps with fairly complex shaders.

The tri/vert count matters if they're boned meshes. If they're not boned, they run pretty damn fast with higher poly counts.

For bones, bear in mind its best to stick with 1 bone / vert - this is an area things can get slow fast on mobile. Thats generally why you want less polys, not because less polys are faster to render. They are faster to render with less polys but its not a big issue at all - its what you're doing with them that matters...

So for an animated main character, 800 is perfectly acceptable. If its a lot of enemies that use bones, then 300-600 seems reasonable.