No project, just learning

[CobaltUDK]

Yes, I remember some RE hadn't shadows for characters in indoors. But is not the kind of optimization that I like ... :P

Here is a video recorded at 60 fps. I can't play it at 60 fps using Firefox, I don't know why (testing with hardware acceleration on and off, with flash and html5). But with Chrome plays at 60.

I think that are not using vsync, so the experience is not te same that playing, but it's close.


You need to configure the video at "720p60".

[AmyP]

Indeed ^^ RE characters hadn't dynamic shadows rendered in indoors. When I was just playing, I never noticed it.

Wow, you kept the 60 FPS in a free flying with all that background below!

[CobaltUDK]

Have in mind that flying at some distance of the floor there are no NPC's (randoms are destroyed and fixed are hidden), no grass (1000 instances kills the framerate) and the visible trees are usually in the lowest LOD.

[AmyP]

Even with it, it's still a good achievement keeping 60 FPS. I don't know why, when I download levels from other developers to take a look, the FPS drops always, about 40 FPS, even with my decent computer. I can't tell about my own levels because they are all chopped into sections until now (game and level design centered progression), and they are running at 120 FPS because of that.

[CobaltUDK]

Perhaps because the modular construction. It's very confortable to build a map using small pieces, but each is a drawcall. Take a look over the maps included in UDK. For example the Epic Citadel has a lot of meshes grouped and its very fast. Then look the night & day demo map, has a lot of individual meshes, each piece of the floor are a mesh... my PC can get 60 fps in that map...

In my map, in the city area, I'm using house dummys for now, but placed with the foliage tool. A lot of houses are grouped in this way. When I replace with the definitive buildings I will group manually to reduce drawcalls.
I can't use foliage tool because it hasn't rigid bodies collision, so if the character are runing and falls to the floor, it can enter in the house trought the wall...

[AmyP]

You're right! I checked the other developers maps when you told about individual meshes and they left everything separated (a lot of draw calls because of it).

I had problems grouping meshes because the merge messed up with the lightning maps in the static meshes (even doing a manual merging work in a 3D program, as 3ds Max and Blender). So I learned to do everything sharing a "map group", the same logic used in modular pieces. Now, if I merge some group meshes, I don't have the lighting map problem giving weird shadows. (resuming the technique, I planned before what are a meshes will be grouped, or potentially grouped in the future, for example, a bunch of plates and glasses. After defining, I make every mesh in this group sharing the same lightning map pre-worked in a merging process. Inside UDK, if I need something merged into the same group, I do it. If not, I leave them separated. I have not tested it on a large scale yet, as I said, my game is very simple ^^).

Do you know another , and more practical, method than mine? I love to hear about a different technique of merging meshes.

[CobaltUDK]

The two only methods I know are merging the meshes in the 3D program, and using the foliage tool in UDK. There are some other method to group meshes in UDK to reduce drawcalls?

Prefabs don't reduce drawcalls, I think.

[yummy-vegetables]

I have landscape that is heavily grassed with many bushes on maps that can be used for multiplayer i.e. streaming wasn't an option.
I reduced drawcalls by grouping the meshes in my 3D program. I do use the foliage tool as well but I found grouping to be the most effective means for me.

Downside ... time to create the map. Why, the larger the group the harder it is to place the larger combined meshes on terrain which is uneven without having floating grass or bushes. The transform and align pivot tool is good for flat surfaces but on uneven ground each mesh needs to be adjusted.

[CobaltUDK]

Your game looks good. For grass you can use the runtime foliage script from Chris Lambert, in this forum. It's random, but for grass will work good. Before using the script, I was trying to fill with grass big areas of the landscape using the foliage tool and the framerate was near to 0...

The worst is that the trees are random too, but I'm going to try a way to use a grid and a seed to have the trees always in the same position & rotation.

Anyway, grouping the meshes in the 3D app before import them in UDK seems the only solution.

[AmyP]

Prefabs don't reduce drawcalls, I think.

Nope? So I was doing it wrong in some groups (not all groups. some of them I was putting in groups inside Blender, others; don't). I was doing a grocery store, gas station, grouping the objects on the shelves using Prefab method. Thanks a lot for mentioning it, I'll go back and regroup those ones and see if it helps with the draw calls in the long term impact. (And I wasn't using the foliage tool for placements, only the manual way).
(Yup, as I changed the project because of the scope, I stopped all graphic things to creating a weapon system which didn't exist in the previous project. Struggling with weapons in 3rd person now, I think I'll delay to take some shots of this gas station with a lot of objects creating more drawcalls).

[CobaltUDK]

I'm not sure about prefabs, It's better to do a test using them and look the drawcalls in the stats.

Do you have opened a thread for your game?

[Chosker]

Prefabs are literally just groups of actors with no optimization of any kind

[Neongho]

They also keep the lightmap resolution information you assigned them before you made it, but that is no matter for you dynamic lighting folks.

[Chosker]

well they will keep all actor properties

[CobaltUDK]

With FaceFX? Not yet.