Low Poly Game Mesh Optimization

Some general advice as it relates to modeling optimized low poly static mesh.
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[@GuestUser-jf8uj]

Great topic, it's one I really needed to see. I like when you go out of your way to show things like the three-to-one reduction after mentioning it, It's very helpful to noobs like me. Thank you! And 22 years veteran is insane.

[@wishyourlife6861]

Thanks for explaining the baking at the end! You're right, I don't understand what it's actually doing so this was really helpful.

[@maxonchik5934]

Useful tip: You can move (not sliding) verts, edges, faces with G,G,G and after that it will sync with uv. Plus, after g,g,g you can rotate and scale with saving UV

[@WyvernZu]

Great to see this topic covered more in-depth.

[@SkeleTonHammer]

VR has been a unique challenge due to the fact that you can see real depth, so certain insinuated normal mapped details don't work well in VR unless they're small. It demands a slightly higher polygon count than you could get away with in flat games to include certain details as real geometry. At the same time, because the game is rendering less efficiently for stereo vision and at a minimum of 90 FPS, in VR performance becomes even more important than for a normal PC game... so it's quite a case of "you just can't win." I've just been sort of shifting my priorities around, sliding around what's important to other areas and taking it from certain areas. For me, this means using the least amount of texture maps possible to convey a realistic surface (with as many fancy tricks as possible to minimize texture sampling in the game's shader), to pack things with extreme efficiency using Packmaster, and a few other little things.

[@gabrielegagliardi3956]

VR is a pain in the a, even more, the documentation is weak compared to regular game assets creation and so on. I've tried in the past to visualise some environments I created inside ue5 and you end up in a maze, the number of parameters to flag, de flag, light baking, etc, drove me insane. I still didn't figure out to this day how to reach 90 fps without them drastically dropping over time. The information out there related to VR is so thin compared to the rest.

[@apemant]

Good tips, thanks! Subscribing for more 😁 If anyone has good tips on how to use trim sheets I'd love that. It's simple on a flat wall or floor, but on a box is different -- for me the normal map always seem to invert on the top etc., and on the corners where 3 edges meet is very hard to make look good. I'm making a game for PC in Unity. Now I just use geometry and bevel my objects once on the worst edges (simpler stuff, like boxes and furniture) to avoid having to use normal maps at all, and then use a Weighted normal modifier.

[@jimmyportfolio]

Doesn't pressing g,g in vertex or edge mode let you slide along the face while preserving uvs?

[@pzthree]

Yes