Model data to judge ingame performance

[Michael_Wittman 0]

mmm...I vent ever make a model for the game but for what is my experience as DCC textures have a heavier impact on performance. I dont know how materials are rendered in game but there is also a impact if the bump maps are generated from the color texture instead of a greyscale map. The weightmaps of the skeletons also affect performance...aswell as the animations itself...when you pick animations in motion capture you have to clean the file pretty well so you only get a few points to draw the animation curves.

Everything affects in the end...but overall I think its the correct picking of textures what can make a big difference...the poly-count...I dont think is that important..Its more the number of objects to be rendered than how many polys have each object. If the trees on the forrest were all merged in a single object you could be astonish on the difference (regarding performance). That would of course imply a lot of problems but...

If there are any tools for export/import game models...etc for XSI I may give it a try  

For those who dont know WTH is XSI

[Michael_Wittman 0]

The question is quite similar to Panda[PL]'s.

How would you suggest to merge your textures in this case.

Lets say you have many custom objects with many textures.

Would you merge textures for each individual object

or

would you merge textures for all objects the same time to keep

the overall texture amount down?

I dont know how does the game load the textures internally.

Case 1 - The texture is loaded once for each material -

Merge textures by material and trick the final texture file to fit in a multiple by 4 size.

Case 2 - Texture is only loaded once by object -

Merge textures by objects and trick the final texture file to fit in a multiple by 4 size.

Case 3 - Texture is loaded once for all the game and no more-

Create a texture Atlas

[maruk 80]

The game loads textures dynamically per mip maps and depending upon real needs, it is great practice to reduce number of texture and sections for every model as much as possible.

Lower LODs should have one section only (section usually creates a draw primitive needed to render it with significant overhead, despite there are some other optimization techniques) if possible.