How Game engines calculate/render materials/textures?
polycounter lvl 3
Hi! So I'm working on a medieval scene and plan to use a modular kit, but I'm not sure what the best practice for splitting up the models would be since I'm not sure how the engine (UE4) calculates materials and textures so I have a question regarding that, though I'm not quite sure how to formulate it best.
1. For the engine, is rendering a particular material a "yes or no" question, or a "how many models use this material" question?
Extreme scenario - Say I have 3 2k trim sheets already present in the scene through the modular kit, and I want to create a rather small model which can be textured using a combination of the trim sheets if I want - Would the engine only have to render the extra polygons that the smaller model consists of, or does it have to calculate the trim sheets all over again? The alternative would be one 1k unique texture.
What would the pros and cons of each way be if both ways are applicable?
- Confused student
Can't seem to find any good resources for this topic, so if you have a good article/information sheet I'd love a link
1. For the engine, is rendering a particular material a "yes or no" question, or a "how many models use this material" question?
Extreme scenario - Say I have 3 2k trim sheets already present in the scene through the modular kit, and I want to create a rather small model which can be textured using a combination of the trim sheets if I want - Would the engine only have to render the extra polygons that the smaller model consists of, or does it have to calculate the trim sheets all over again? The alternative would be one 1k unique texture.
What would the pros and cons of each way be if both ways are applicable?
- Confused student
Can't seem to find any good resources for this topic, so if you have a good article/information sheet I'd love a link
Replies
The engine keeps textures in memory while it's rendering the scene. And often unloads textures when nothing is visible anymore that uses them. Because memory is a limited precious resource.
You could still decide you want a new texture set for this item. Whether you have room in memory for it, that's something to figure out by profiling ram and performance on your target hardware.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Rendering
https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Performance/Guidelines/index.html