I'm making a multiplayer map for the mod MWLL (Mechwarrior Living Legends) and I've got a few questions about general level performance.
Tris count: Whats a good number to use as a maximum?
I don't know if there's a performance spike in CE2 if you go beyond x tris, or what the upper limit is. My current level I'm trying to keep the budget under 3 million for any given scene.My level I fear is getting rather high, I've added occlusion meshes to all the new assets I've created...does the terrain automatically occlude or do I need to bury planes in hillsides etc?
Yep, the heightfield occludes anything behind it. Assuming you're looking at the surface normal of a the heightfield. Whereas if the camera was 'underneath/behind' the surface normal, nothing will be culled.Anything flying seems to have the problem of avoiding all the occlusion as well, is this just something that flyers have to deal with or is there a trick to it?
I don't understand the subject of the sentence... 'Another flying'...... What ?(
DP (drawcells?): I've read the Asset Performance Guidelines for Sandbox 2, it recommends around 2k. I've now got quite a few new textures on the new assets I've been adding, most are already 512x512 or less.
Do you mean drawcalls?For the small textures it recommends merging them onto a single map, which is fine but does this mean I have to UVW unwrap them to texture the objects?
YesUntil now I've tried to limit unwrapping because it takes so long, I've stuck to basic planar and box mapping and because my textures are alone on their maps its worked out fine. In 3DSMax you can crop maps with multiple textures on them and still use basic planar and box mapping but I've noticed cryengine 2 seems to ignore this and just applies the whole map. So, is there anyway to crop maps in sandbox 2 or should I think about merging my smaller textures and UVW Unwrap them onto the assets?
Not really sure what you mean. But as far as MatEd in Sandbox goes, it can't crop a raster map. You've gotta do that in Max/Maya + PhotoshopMost of my textures have normal and spec maps too, I understand these add to the DP count aswell?
Do you mean drawcalls? If so, I haven't been able to verify this. But I suspect they don't.Shadows: How expensive are they interms of performance? I don't plan on having a dynamic ToD but turning on shadows on 224+ large assets (buildings) seems like it would cost me a lot.
Shadows really hit performance, but I think the bigger performance hit is number of lights that are shadow casters. Try this experiment. Build an interior space with it's own lighting that excludes the skylight. Put in a single point light, shadow casting, and around 500,000 tris of geometry. Note the frame time. Now put 8 more point lights with shadow casting & note the frame time.Thanks for your time
