Search

1. How many instructions are to many?

   

   Topic by shxsy · Sep 2013 · Home› Unreal Engine

   Before you answer... I know....'It depends'. On many things. But as I browse through materials in UDK, I notice that a lot of them have many instructions... It seems like many of them average between 50-90. I'm transitioning out of UI into VFX and am really looking for some general guidelines for building materials for VFX…

2. Re: How many instructions are to many?

   

   Reply by Santewi · Sep 2013 · Home› Unreal Engine

   To add to what imbueFX said, it really depends on how big and how many particles there are on the screen. You could make a choice between having a lot of simple particles, or having a few more complicated ones.

3. Re: How many instructions are to many?

   

   Reply by Xendance · Sep 2013 · Home› Unreal Engine

   Also, acceptable instruction count depends on how visible the material will be on screen. For example a costly terrain material can eat performance quite a bit since there are so many pixels to shade. I just have to point out, that you said "greater than 100" :P

4. Re: How many instructions are to many?

   

   Reply by imbueFX · Sep 2013 · Home› Unreal Engine

   There's a lot of good advice in this thread, and yes as Valias points out some instructions cost more than others. This depends specifically on what kind of hardware this will be running on. For example, using a rotator isn't necessarily a lot of instructions, but it would DESTROY framerate on a 360 / PS3 with lots of…

5. Re: How many instructions are to many?

   

   Reply by sprunghunt · Sep 2013 · Home› Unreal Engine

   Also keep in mind that transparent objects, like water or smoke, will cost more per-instruction because they are drawing over the top of another shader. So for these kinds of objects you should try to be extra careful.

6. Re: How many instructions are to many?

   

   Reply by mAlkAv!An · Sep 2013 · Home› Unreal Engine

   Another thing to keep in mind is that the instruction count depends on the lighting as well. Materials for dynamic lighting ("Used With Static Lighting" unchecked in the material properties) will have more instructions. If it's for static lighting make sure to uncheck "Allow Lightmap Specular" which is on by default and…

7. Re: How many instructions are to many?

   

   Reply by Vailias · Sep 2013 · Home› Unreal Engine

   Absolute basic instruction count for a solid color diffuse is in the 30-40 neighborhood. Also not all instructions are equal. An add is different than a square root. So its hard to say. However there are hard limits. 512 (I think) for SM3 (Direct x 7-9) 4096 for SM4 DX 10+ I just made up a shader with about 1200…

8. Re: How many instructions are to many?

   

   Reply by shxsy · Sep 2013 · Home› Unreal Engine

   Thanks for all the advice everyone. Excited about my transition, but realize there is a ton to learn on the technical side of things.

9. Re: How many instructions are to many?

   

   Reply by ambershee · Sep 2013 · Home› Unreal Engine

   Absolutely. Unreal in particular doesn't handle layers of alpha particularly gracefully - it can often be better to use more triangles to better fit your geometry to your textures in a lot of cases.

10. Re: How many instructions are to many?

    

    Reply by Lazerus Reborn · Sep 2013 · Home› Unreal Engine

    I think at the end of the day 100>* is best guide. What you should be thinking is, how can i do this with the least amount of instructions. Be efficient and as long as it does it's job i can't see much of an issue.