Trees and plants for Mobile
Available on Marketplace: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketp…nts-for-mobile
Hello! We will be happy to provide you with our overview of new content “Trees and plants for Mobile”. At the moment, the content is in the final stage of development. Here you can follow the work progress and get acquainted with the main characteristics of the project. Also we will be happy to hear your opinion.
“Trees and plants for Mobile” is primarily target at mobile platforms and devices. It includes 296 models of deciduous trees and other plants that will help you quickly create beautiful natural scenes on mobile devices and other platforms. Each tree has the variant of autumn, winter and summer.
The peculiarity of the content is excellent optimization and simple materials. Each tree contains of no more than 2000 triangles, while save a good view. All LODs were created and corrected manually, which gives a smooth transition between LODs while saving the view. In addition, all trees have billboards, including a top view. The content is fully compatible with static lighting, all models have good lightmaps (no errors). The “overdraw” effect is minimal due to the optimization of transparent areas. All textures are customized and have the optimal resolution, but you can always return the original resolution in the texture properties.
There is a master instance that allows you to make changes to all materials at once, which saves you from manually switching of parameters in each instance material. All material parameters have descriptions and comments in two languages (Russian and English). The content is already configured and ready to use right from the “box”, which will save your time.
Before the release, we will definitely test the content on devices and share with you the results. Below you can find additional and useful information about the features of the content in the form of screenshots and videos. During the development process will be appear new materials!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=c22vyLV2OaU
F.A.Q:
Question: How to make dynamic lighting for billboards?
Answer: You can use standard lighting for billboards, but this will increase the number of instructions in the material.
In order to use standard lighting, open the main material and make the steps that are shown in the screenshot.
Next, in the properties of the billboard material, set the shader type to Default Lit. More in the screenshots.
Possible second method without changing the material. If you know blueprints. You can also simply change the value in “BP_BillboardLighting” depending on the time of day. You will have to match the light value with the time value. To do this, you can use the time line node in blueprint. If you do not know blueprints. Use the first method that was previously described.
Optimization information.
- Shader Complexity
- Extra low-poly with good visual quality
- Quality switch and Feature level switch.
For additional optimization, the material uses the “Quality switch” and “Feature level switch” functions.
Quality switch will help to optimize the material depending on the quality.
On medium and low quality material, the material will be completely roughness, it will remove all reflections.
Also, at the low quality of the material, Normal will be fully turned off, which will save texture samples.
Feature level switch allows you to disable extra functions depending on the platform. Thus, subsurface scattering functions will be disabled on mobile devices because SSS is not supported by them.
- Billboard materials.
Billboard material uses Unlit shader. This gives a very low cost of performance for billboards and reduces the instructions in the material to 66. But you have to adjust the billboard lighting in the properties of the materials to match the lighting in the scene.
Additional optimization, useful materials.
- Console commands.
Use the “r.StaticMeshLODDistanceScale” console commands for static meshes and “foliage.LODDistanceScale” for foliage instances to quickly configure the distance of the LODs.
If necessary, add console commands when you run a level in the level blueprint.
- Opacity Mask Clip Value.
Adjust the “Opacity Mask Clip Value” parameter in the main material.
A lower value will reduce the cost of transparency, but may degrade the visual quality.
- Dithered LOD Transition.
You can turn off “Dithered LOD Transition” in the main material.
Turning off will make loading LODs less smooth, but it can increase overall performance.
Support for this parameter for mobile devices in new versions of UE4 is switched in the project settings.
Features and useful information.
- AO for billboards. Improves the look of billboards and adds depth.
- The function “better billboard visualization”.
When activated, it improves the appearance of billboards, but slightly increases the number of instructions in the material. Depending on the viewing angle, it hides some elements of the billboard, this allows you to get a clean view from all sides!
- Comments to all parameters on two languages!
Screenshots.
Test results and minimum system requirements:
- Tested Platforms and configurations:
PC
CPU: i7-7700K 4.2 GHz
GPU: Gtx 1080ti 11Gb
RAM: DDR4 32Gb 3333Mhz
OC: Windows 10 x64
Mi Mix 2S
CPU: Snapdragon 845, 2.8 Ghz
GPU: Adreno 630
RAM: 8Gb
Leeco Le2 x527
CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 MSM8976, 1.8 Ghz.
GPU: Adreno 510
RAM: 3Gb
- Test results:
PC:
DemoPC_Level, (1x1 km) landscape, 4941 instances (Full dynamic light), Epic Quality, Unlocked fps.
180-240 FPS Average fps: 230.
DemoMobile_Level, (1x1 km) landscape, 4941 instances (Static Light), Epic Quality, Unlocked fps.
240 FPS.
Mi Mix 2S:
DemoMobile_Level, (1x1 km) landscape, 4941 instances (Static Light), Epic Quality, 2K resolution.
45-60 FPS Average fps: 55.
DemoMobile_Level, (1x1 km) landscape, 4941 instances (Static Light), Epic Quality, HD resolution.
60 FPS.
DemoMobile_Level, (512x512 m) landscape (not included in the content), 2140 instances (Static Light), Epic Quality, 2K resolution.
60 FPS.
Leeco Le2 x527:
DemoMobile_Level, (512x512 m) landscape (not included in the content), 2140 instances (Static Light), Epic Quality, HD resolution.
25-35 FPS Average fps: 30.
DemoMobile_Level, (512x512 m) landscape (not included in the content), 2140 instances (Static Light), Epic Quality, (nHD 640x360) resolution.
50-60 FPS Average fps: 60.
Minimum system requirements for Android:
Minimum requirements are specified for the landscape (512x512 meters).
CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 820, 4 cores, 2.2GHz. Similar or higher.
GPU: Adreno 530. Similar or higher.
RAM: 1.5Gb or higher.
Technical information.
Link to the table of parameters. Here you can find out the amount of triangles of each model on each LOD.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets…it?usp=sharing
- Physically-Based Rendering: Yes
- Texture Size: from 512512 - 20482048
- Collision: Yes, custom
- Triangle Count: on average 1545 per 0LOD, 784 per 1LOD, 350 per 2LOD, 20 per 3LOD (billboards)
- LODs: Yes, 2 LODs for each model + billboards
- Number of Models: 296
- Number of Material Instances: 372
- Number of Materials: 3
- Number of Textures: 760 (Base Color and Normal map)
- Platforms Tested: Windows 10 x64, Mi Mix 2S.
