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

82fc689f-7ae7-5865-bbff-d6d84f5ecb61:zx7pohSEomVRos4yXEnKnl

Types of Texture Filtering

Texture Filtering Best Practices

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we compare different filtering settings for your textures and the use cases for which each are appropriate.

Texture filtering often improves Texture quality in a Scene. Without Texture filtering, artifacts such as aliasing can cause Textures to appear blocky. Texture filtering is often used to sharpen Textures and eliminate aliasing.

However, Texture filtering can also degrade performance because achieving better Texture quality often requires more processing. Texture filtering can sometimes account for up to half of GPU energy consumption. Choosing simpler and more appropriate Texture filters can help reduce the energy demands of an application.

Nearest/Point filtering: This is the simplest and least computationally intense form of Texture filtering, though when seen up close, nearest/point filtering can make Textures appear blocky. 

Bilinear filtering: Bilinear filtering samples and averages neighboring texels to color pixels in a Texture. Unlike nearest filtering, bilinear filtering results in less-blocky pixels, as the pixels have a smooth gradient. A side effect of bilinear filtering is that Textures will look blurry when viewed up close. 

Trilinear filtering: Trilinear filtering is like bilinear filtering but with added blend between mipmap levels. Trilinear filtering removes noticeable changes between mipmaps by smoothing the transition. 

(Note: Bilinear and trilinear filtering requires sampling more pixels and, therefore, more computation.) 

Anisotropic filtering:  Anisotropic filtering makes Textures look better when viewed at an angle, which is ideal for ground-level Textures. 

We recommend that you try the following Texture-filtering tips:

Use bilinear filtering for a balance between performance and visual quality.

Use trilinear filtering selectively because it requires more memory bandwidth than bilinear filtering.

Use bilinear and 2x anisotropic filtering instead of trilinear and 1x anisotropic, as it can both look and perform better.

Keep the anisotropic level low. Only use a level higher than two for critical game Assets.

Keeping in mind the best practices for Texture filtering will ensure that you’re using computational resources in an effective way without degrading the visual quality of your Textures. In the next tutorial, we’ll discuss the performance benefits of using mipmaps for Textures.

Texture Filtering

1. Types of Texture Filtering

2. Texture Filtering Best Practices

3. Conclusion

Complete this tutorial