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

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

Course Introduction

The Optimization Process

Profiling Tools

Geometry - Introduction 

Triangle and Polygon Usage

Level of Detail

Additional Geometry Best Practices

Demo: Level of Detail

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

Geometry

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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Batching with Texture Atlases

Before You Begin

What to Watch For

Conclusion

Texture atlases are an efficient way of packing your textures and saving valuable resources for your 3D mobile application. In this demo, you will be able to identify the gains in performance when applying Texture atlases to your 3D scene.

In a previous tutorial, you learned about implementing atlases when using multiple Textures in a mobile application. In this demo, you’ll  have the opportunity to profile a sample Scene in order to compare the performance of atlassed and unatlassed Textures on static objects. 

If you haven’t done so, download the course project that contains the sample demos here. When prompted by the pop-up, click Textures Demo or open the sample Scene in the Project view (Assets > 2 Textures > Scene > Scene 2). Once downloaded and open, you can either enter Play Mode in the Editor or build the Scene to your mobile device to use the Profiler. 

Like the Geometry Demo Scene, we have the same array of towers with the player camera dollying between a row of towers. In this sample Scene, the towers that you can toggle between use either atlassed or unatlassed Textures. When implementing atlased Textures on static objects, you greatly reduce draw calls to the GPU.

Toggling between the Texture implementation, compare Batches and Saved by batching in the Stats window and the Rendering section’s Batches graph in the Profiler view. You will be able to see the difference in savings between atlassed and unatlassed implementations. 

You can also watch how each frame is being drawn in the Frame Debugger view. When enabling the Frame Debugger, the Scene is paused and the number of draw calls is listed at the top along with the Render Camera label. Toggling between Texture implementations while paused will show the increase in draw calls with atlased Textures. 

This project highlighted the flexibility of Textures, from the details that can be stored in one to the implementation considerations that make them performant. Whether you want to show details in your geometry or lights, it’s often more efficient to do so in the different types of data we can store in Textures. In the next project, we will learn about how Shaders and Materials support, render, and optimize Assets like Textures. 

Demo: Texture Atlases

1. Batching with Texture Atlases

2. Before You Begin

3. What to Watch For

4. Conclusion

Complete this tutorial