I'm currently in the process of skinning the draugr skeleton mesh to a human skeleton, and I thought of using a little mesh-smooth to improve the mesh (which is really awful btw).

The vanilla skeleton is at about 8700 polys, while my mesh is now about 20,000 polys. Is this too much? What would a reasonable polycount be for a full-body armour?

if you're making it a mod for others, then maybe try to stick around 10-15k if you can, 20k is probably ok. Its not going to make much difference on a higher end machine, but add in a bunch of relatively high poly models and it can drag down the fps.

Well, the skeleton is not gonna be worn by the player all the time (just when the PC dies and the body disintegrates) so I don't think it'll lower performance that much.

But I'll try to apply the mesh-smooth to the parts that really need it, like the skull, and get the polycount to around 15k - 20k.

Thanks for the advice!

This is for your mod where dragons absorbs the PC's soul, correct?

If that's the case then I believe you'll be alright there mate. It would matter if its for a normal armour, where multiple NPC's might be displaying it on screen at once, but if its just the one instance, I'm sure you'll be fine

- Hypno

Ah that's good to know. and yes, it is for that mod.

I tend to obsess over performance a bit too much... I remember when I made the high poly rings for Jewels of the Nord, and I kept freaking out because the polycount for each ring was over 2K lol