Tiling and game performance (please help!)

Enalya

Hi Polycount  
I've been brooding on this for a while, can't find anything helpful on Google and set up my own tests...

Main question: What is heavier performance wise, using multiple tiling textures or tiling planes with a texture atlas?

I will try to explain both methods:
1. For 6 walls (subdivided planes) I use 1 atlas texture
2. For 6 walls (planes) I use 6 tiling textures



To try and find out what method causes better performance in game, I set up a scene in Unity . I noticed insignificant difference with 1 cube, so I tried a larger scale by duplicating it up to 9 cubes.



These were my results (working on a MSI GE62MVR 7RG Apache Pro):

1. Atlas method
Low on SetPass/Draw calls, high on Tris/Verts


2. Tile method
High on SetPass/Draw calls, low on Tris/Verts


So far I was super proud of myself But since I'm no technical artist I'm not sure how to read this and what to base my choice of method on. I do not know what is common in environment art. I also wouldn't know where to draw the line with a smaller to larger scale environment...

Could someone shine his/her light on this subject?
Thanks so much in advance!

poopipe

This stuff starts to become important when you have a lot of content so it's hard to make a call without knowing how big an environment you're going to make and what's in it

As a rule, individual placeable/reusable assets (eg props/modular pieces) will have a unique map/texture atlas and larger, unique assets (eg a really big wall) will use tileables.   This generally allows you re-use resources where it counts the most. 

kio

as a general rule of thumb:

drawcalls are expensive

verts are cheap(er)

both creating/updating atlases can be a pain without a proper workflow. so you also want to facotr in the developer time too..

so in the end make it cheap and easy to build, make it as 'optimal' as needed. dont optimize for optimizations sake.

not sure what your doing there - but probably all of this doesnt really matter, just make it nice and beautiful.

fmnoor

The type of game you're working on, and the relation of the assets to the camera will dictate which workflow is preferred. It's not uncommon for larger titles to use both - with texture atlases for objects in the distance (merged clumps to reduce drawcalls) and closer up assets using both more materials and tiling materials.

It's a balancing act based on how much is on screen, and your texture budgets.

Enalya

Thank you all so much for taking the time, this is very insightful and helps me a lot further!