Geometry - Introduction 

Triangle and Polygon Usage

Level of Detail

Additional Geometry Best Practices

Demo: Level of Detail

This project will highlight optimizations for 3D models that can make a game more efficient while maintaining aesthetic intent, improving the performance and experience on mobile devices. 

Geometry

Course Introduction

The Optimization Process

Profiling Tools

Textures - Introduction

Texture Size, Color Space, and Compression

Texture Atlases

Texture Filtering

Mipmapping

UV Unwrap, Visual Impact, and Texture Channel Packing

Alpha Channels and Normal Map Best Practices

Editing Texture Settings

Demo: Texture Atlases

Shaders and Materials - Overview

Optimizing Shaders for Mobile Platforms

Transparencies

Additional Material and Shader Best Practices

Demo: Draw Calls and SRP Batcher

Lighting - Overview

Light Modes and Types

Lighting for Static Objects

Light Probes

Shadows

Demo: Baked Lighting

Conclusion/Next Steps

Welcome to 3D Art Optimization for Mobile Applications! In this introductory project, we will review the course's main learning objectives, discuss the practice of optimization, and identify the optimization tools available at your disposal.

Introduction/Optimization and Profiling

This project will highlight the different implementation considerations and optimizations that take advantage of a Texture’s flexibility. When given the correct settings and applied correctly over their many use cases, Textures play a major role in achieving your desired visual effects. 

Textures

Shaders and Materials play a crucial role in determining how target hardware will process and render your 3D objects. In this project, you will explore best practices that will keep the shaders lightweight and fast when running on phones with limited resources.

Shaders and Materials

Lighting is one of the most important aspects of real-time 3D visuals. It can set the mood, guide interactions, and identify goals and objectives. In this project, you will learn about and compare the differences between the available lights and light modes that you can use in your 3D mobile application.

Lighting

ARMUnityMobileOptimization.zip

In this intermediate course, participants will learn how to produce performance-optimized 3D assets and scenes for mobile applications. Topics will cover tips on optimizing Geometry, Textures, Materials, Shaders, and Lighting. This course was created with technical artists and content creators in mind.

Arm & Unity Presents: 3D Art Optimization for Mobile Applications

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Decreasing Vertices with LOD

Before You Begin

What to Watch For

Conclusion

Level of Detail (LOD) is a useful tool in maintaining desired aesthetic in your 3D models while optimizing for performance. In this demo, you will be able to experiment with the ideas you learned about in this project, profiling and comparing performance between LOD and non-LOD implementations. 

In a previous tutorial, you learned about the benefits of implementing Level of Detail (LOD) on your 3D models. Using LOD in your 3D Scene reduces the number of vertices that need to be processed by your mobile device’s CPU while maintaining visual fidelity.

In this sample Scene, you will get to profile and measure the difference in performance using LOD and non-LOD models.

If you haven’t done so, download the course project that contains the sample demos here. When prompted by the pop-up, click Geometry Demo or open the sample Scene in the Project view (Assets > 1 Models > Scene > Scene 1). Once the Scene is downloaded and open, you can either enter Play mode in the Editor or build the Scene to your mobile device to profile in the Profiler. 

The sample Scene contains an array of towers in neat rows. A Cinemachine Camera dollies between a row, looking into the distance as each tower gets farther and farther away.

There are two toggles in the Scene that you can experiment with: 

The Change LOD multiplier slider allows you to set the LOD bias of models in the Scene. The higher the slider, the greater the multiplier for the LOD’s switching distance for a given model.

The Switch Mode button switches all models in the Scene between non-LOD and LOD implementations.

Using LOD reduces the number of vertices being processed by your game while maintaining visual fidelity. As such, keep an eye on the number of vertices being processed in the Stats window and the Rendering section’s Vertices graph in the Profiler view when toggling between LOD and non-LOD models. 

You might not be able to see a significant change in CPU usage while profiling the sample Scene. We encourage you to build the project onto your mobile device and profile it using the Unity Profiler. How is CPU usage affected when switching from LOD to non-LOD models?

When working with and creating 3D models, it’s important to keep optimization in mind. With built-in features like LOD and the tips and tricks you learned in this project, you now have an array of optimization tools. In the next project, we’ll dive into Textures, which you can use to add detail to your models. 

Demo: Level of Detail

1. Decreasing Vertices with LOD

2. Before You Begin

3. What to Watch For

4. Conclusion

Complete this tutorial