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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Overview

Why Use Texture Atlases?

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we discuss the benefits of packing details into Texture atlases. 

A Texture atlas is an image that contains data from several smaller images that have been packed together. Instead of having one Texture for one Mesh, using a Texture atlas allows you to have a larger Texture that several meshes make use of.

A Texture atlas can be created before making the Asset, which means the Asset should be UV unwrapped according to the Texture atlas. This requires some early planning when creating the Texture.

The Texture atlas can also be created after the Asset is finished by merging Textures in painting software. However, this also means that the UV islands — connected groups of polygons in a Texture map — must be rearranged according to the Texture.

The following image highlights which 3D objects use one Texture set:

Texture atlasing enables batching for several static objects that share the same Texture atlas and the same Material. Batching reduces the number of draw calls; fewer draw calls results in better performance when the game is CPU-bound.

Unity has a feature that batches objects when GameObjects are marked as static. This is done without having to manually merge the objects. Further information on this can be found in the Unity documentation.

Texture atlasing also requires fewer Textures inside the game, as they are packed together. With compression, this helps to keep the memory cost of Textures down.

Texture atlasing is a useful tool for reducing draw calls and memory usage in mobile applications. In the next tutorial, we’ll explore the impacts of various Texture filtering methods on performance. 

Texture Atlases

1. Overview

2. Why Use Texture Atlases?

3. Conclusion

Complete this tutorial