Optimising My First Environment

[OmegaSubzero]

Update:

Deleted all lighting. Built lighting and played in UDKGame. Framerate 58.

Screenshot: http://puu.sh/5RfQi/2cbb2b0dac.png

[OmegaSubzero]

I thought there was something wrong there, mAlaAv!An! It's also reading as 24 lights when I only have 5 in my scene.

There is a Skylight, a Dominant Directional Light and three Pointlights. They are all using their default properties.

There's a few small InterpActors in the environment which of course would use the Dynamic channel from the Dominant Directional Light and everything else is a Static Mesh so I'm not sure why the Dynamic lighting would be getting used on those Static meshes? I've built my lighting so this should have baked static onto them?

Thanks for the reply

[mAlkAv!An]

You've got way too many draw calls, given the fact it's a rather simple scene with a reasonable amount of individual meshes.
I'd guess there is still some dynamic lights in the level which are affecting multiple meshes objects and therefore boosting up the draw calls.

[OmegaSubzero]

Having to come back to this thread because the issues persist.

For a short period of time (after following all advice on this thread) my framerate was acceptable, at around 40 frames. I emphasize on acceptable because my machine should be able to achieve a flawless 60, and does so on the example maps.

I've done the following:
- Reset all static meshes to their default settings
- Deleted all lights and added them again. Only basic settings (brightness, colour, etc.) have been changed on any lights
- Baked static lighting (build lighting) to preview quality
- Ensured that no meshes have an unreasonably high polygon count

I have a deadline in < 48 hours and I need to record the final project video, but I can't if the framerate is this poor.

Below are screenshots of stats that I was told to use but I don't really understand what I'm looking for. D;

http://puu.sh/5Qg2u/c96547d89f.png
http://puu.sh/5Qg1L/de7faf6eac.png
http://puu.sh/5QfWd/b4531f1878.png

One of the environment: http://puu.sh/5QfUc/b0083aba52.png

Any help highly appreciated in this time of desperation!

[OmegaSubzero]

Ok cheers.

[DinoSrdoc]

Don't worry, it really isn't all that complicated. Here's the link to the official docs, http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MeshS...ationTool.html. To sum up that doc, you just select your mesh, go to the mesh editor, choose mesh simplification tool and fiddle with the settings until you're happy with them.

[OmegaSubzero]

You should also make LOD's for all of the objects in the scene. It won't make a huge difference, but it will definitely help.

Excuse my ignorance, but I'm not 100% sure how LODs work (I know they mean Level of Detail). I've got Generate Building LODs checked when I build lighting though.

[DinoSrdoc]

You should also make LOD's for all of the objects in the scene. It won't make a huge difference, but it will definitely help.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk.

[OmegaSubzero]

I don't know, from the screenshot you can see the shadows how jagged the edges are and how there's a shadow artifact on the sides of buildings, that's all signs of dynamic shadows

Okay, I'm gonna go through my scene and just try optimise it based on the advice - I've been a bit clumsy with the rocks so I'll start by trying to remove some of them and improve the framerate.

PreComputed shadows is active on all of the buildings; they're all also using their defaults so I'll go through them and turn off "Accept Dynamic Lights" as well as "Accept Dynamic Dominant Light Shadows" as the objects are static and my DominantDirectional light is giving off a static light therefore these buildings shouldn't require Dynamic lighting on them(?)

Thanks for being patient with me. I'll keep tampering and seeing if I can get this to work efficiently.

[darthviper107]

I don't know, from the screenshot you can see the shadows how jagged the edges are and how there's a shadow artifact on the sides of buildings, that's all signs of dynamic shadows

[OmegaSubzero]

But since your entire scene is using dynamic shadows it's slowing down.

Wait, why is my entire scene using dynamic lighting? I thought only the InterpActors and SpeedTrees would use the dynamic lighting and the other static meshes would use the static lighting; which should be baked.

[OmegaSubzero]

Okay built everything and the framerate in Editor is about 50, but in-game it's still at less than 20. D;

[OmegaSubzero]

Okay, I've made the following changes and I'll do a preview lighting build shortly to check the framerate:

1) Reset all my static meshes to their default values for lighting

2) Deleted all the lights and put new ones down. I have a DominantDirectional (D/S) light acting as the Sun, a Skylight to keep the darkest areas partially illuminated and two PointLights (U) over the ponds. The Pointlights have shadows disabled as this is the sort of effect I want.

Screenshot: http://puu.sh/5A0UG/ac5d1e8c26.png

I take it this means my framerate after a lighting build should be okay?

Thanks for replies so far, all; and sorry if I'm a bit slow/painful to cope with.

[darthviper107]

Having the check there to cast dynamic shadows means it will cast dynamic shadows on dynamic objects, so when you build lighting, by default it will cast static shadows on static objects and dynamic shadows on dynamic objects. If you have no dynamic object around to get shadows then it won't effect anything. But since your entire scene is using dynamic shadows it's slowing down.
If you want to use static shadows, then also make sure the static shadow resolution isn't too high, by default it's 32 which is very low, but don't set it too high.

[OmegaSubzero]

Okay, starting to get really confused here.

Here are the properties of one of my custom built meshes, http://puu.sh/5zZ7V/3f21fbb906.png - I've literally just dragged and dropped this into the scene. By default it casts both static and dynamic shadows (which I assume is a resource waste causing my low framerate as it's a static object therefore should only cast static shadows.)

My framerate was always poor which is why I started tampering with the lighting - the only things I'd changed on them were the colour - I turned off shadows on the lighting over the ponds as I just wanted to give the pond areas an unrealistic illumination effect.