Best way of optimizing SubUv textures, need help.

Development Rendering
, , , , ,
1

  1. Avoiding Overdraw: So in the case of CPU SubUv animations, is always better to use as much alpha space as possible in each frame of the texture right? In order not to get overdraw problems?

  2. Laggy textures: Its weird that i make such simple textures and i try to use as much alpha space in each frame of the flip book, yet my textures are still laggy when played many times close to the camera and close to each other (its certainly overdraw?). I mean last night i made this one framed texture of a dust base for explosions, its like around 256x256 in size, imported from BMP format, yet this texture will lag more that for example your T_Smoke_SubUV texture which never really lags for some reason.

  3. FlipBook’s center point in SubUV’s: I,m wondering if the center (or anchor point in After Effects terms) of each frame of the SubUv texture has to always be right in the middle of the frame and not at the middle bottom of the frame for example. This will help in the case of animations like rising flame mushrooms or dust that kicks up so i could use more of the frame’s alpha space. Would it be possible to change the center of where the animation runs in each frame?

Thank you!

2

Hey Bruno_G -

I am going to sort of answer Question 1 and 3 at the same time. Yes you want to get have a flipbbok texture that is created using the least amount alpha-ed space as possible in each frame. So if you are creating them in After Effects I will often expand each individual frame to fill its alloted frame space as much as possible, because the anchor point is in the center that means even though it looks like I am eliminating a lot of the particles growth I can use the size of the particle in Cascade to give it right back to me.

Here is an example of a rendered Maya Fluid explosion that I did a while back and then put it into After Effects to generate the Flipbook (mind you that you are not seeing any alpha in this image):

19581-explosionflipbook.jpg
19581-explosionflipbook.jpg1024×512 123 KB

You will notice in the example that the explosion grows but still fills the individual frames because I can increase the size in Cascade of the particle itself. I am able to do this because of that central anchor point.

The lagginess you are describing is a bit unusual, but have you tried to import based of a more optimized image file type, like a TGA or PNG? Does it still generate the amount of lag? Another good test about whether its teh texture or the material would be to replace your texture with the T_Smoke_SubUV texture and see if the lag still occurs, if it does then we need to look at your material and the effect itself.

Thank You

Eric Ketchum