Shaders and Materials - Overview

Optimizing Shaders for Mobile Platforms

Transparencies

Additional Material and Shader Best Practices

Demo: Draw Calls and SRP Batcher

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

Course Introduction

The Optimization Process

Profiling Tools

Geometry - Introduction 

Triangle and Polygon Usage

Level of Detail

Additional Geometry Best Practices

Demo: Level of Detail

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

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

Geometry

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

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

a308a96e-c511-50b5-8b8c-0e4d51c42be5:6udFvAlfFjsjj7eis1hqE5

The SRP Batcher

Before You Begin

What to Watch For

Conclusion

When using the built-in Universal Render Pipeline, you're also afforded Unity's Scriptable Render Pipeline Batcher. In this demo, you will have a chance to experiment with the SRP Batcher and compare performance before and after enabling this feature.

In a previous tutorial, you learned about using the built-in Universal Render Pipeline (URP) Shaders in Unity to ensure the best mobile performance. One benefit of using the provided Shaders is access to Unity’s SRP (Scriptable Render Pipeline) Batcher. In this tutorial, you will have the opportunity to measure performance boosts provided by this batcher. 

If you haven’t done so, download the course project that contains the sample demos here. When prompted by the pop-up, click Shaders and Materials Demo or open the sample Scene in the Project view (Assets > 3 Shaders & Materials > Scene > Scene 3). Once downloaded and open, you can either enter Play Mode in the Editor or build this Scene to your mobile device to profile in the Profiler. 

The sample Scene contains several moving pieces — an animated knight, several pieces of grass applied to a flat plane, and a particle effect simulating flames using a transparent Shader so users are able to see the knights in the background.

Each Shader was implemented using Shader Graph, a node-based Shader tool built into URP. As such, most Shaders created with Shader Graph are also supported by URP features. One such feature is the SRP Batcher.

You can find the option to switch the SRP Batcher on and off within the provided UniversalRenderPipelineAsset (Assets > Content > Settings). Under Advanced, toggle the SRP Batcher.

When toggling the SRP Batcher on, watch the Statistics window and the Rendering Section’s Vertices Graph in the Profiler View. Aside from a bump in FPS, the number of triangles and vertices being processed decreases dramatically. Because our objects use a Shader that is compatible with URP, the render pipeline automatically batches all relevant geometry data to reduce the amount of data processed. 

As such, you can also pause the game and enable the Frame Debugger with and without the SRP Batcher on. You will notice a significant decrease in draw calls with the SRP Batcher enabled. 

The ease with which you can fine-tune and configure your Shaders and Materials in Unity allows for impressive visual effects at a small performance cost. Through features provided in the Universal Render Pipeline, and applying the built-in Shaders that use them, you can make the most out of the limited resources of the mobile devices that you target. In the next project, we will learn about using Lights to add ambience and mood to your mobile applications performantly and in conjunction with URP. 

Demo: Draw Calls and SRP Batcher

1. The SRP Batcher

2. Before You Begin

3. What to Watch For

4. Conclusion

Complete this tutorial