Quick #Unity tip: don't import entire asset packs directly into your project. You end up with a lot of junk that slows down loading and compiling.
Instead have a second project set aside for importing and cleaning up just the things you need first.
This also allows you to adjust file structure, fit naming conventions and get your meta files set up right.
All those demo assets shipped with plugins really eat up your time.
You may want one particle system from a particle pack containing maybe sixty effects.
By picking that effect out and moving the assets it needs together into one folder, naming this correctly for your project and moving it across, you save a lot of headaches.
Model assets can often, unfortunately, be packaged with pre-atlassed textures.
This is really bad if you are only using one or two models in the asset pack. The rest of that texture memory is just waste.
For example, I found a phone in one project that takes up about 128 pixels square of texture in a 4k map atlas. The rest is objects not used.
Baking this off to a 128x128 map reduces the memory down of one texture, but there are five.
Yep.
As an asset producer for asset stores, I highly recommend NOT atlasing your props and letting the end user do so. It is much easier to assemble assets with a tool than rebaking those out to new UV layouts.
Let your customer do this.
Another tip is to pop open assets and look at the topology before importing. There are a LOT of great models that, when you look at them, are actually nightmarishly expensive.
Look for props with multiple materials, uv seams, subdivision on flat surfaces, and sharp edges.
These can choke up your game in a number of ways, upping draw calls, state changes and pushing up the cost of lighting depth checks for shadows.
Cleaning them up even just a little bit can have great downstream effects.
One asset pack type I am constantly finding expensive in resources is particle system packs.
These are designed to look as cool as possible, but are created out of the context of your game.
Once you have the system in your game test area, start backing down the numbers.
Of particles, and looking for a good balance that suits your game.
Character packs are brilliant for projects when you are learning, but again, these can often be tricky to integrate properly and efficiently into your project. Custom scripts for materials, unoptimised exports
For bone weights and a heap of stuff you probably won't even see, such as teeth and backs of eyeballs.
Again, import to a clean scene and really pull them apart to see what assets they use, and if you can make adjustments to save yourself pain down stream.
For example, bringing your FBX into blender, setting "limited bone weights" to 3 or 4 and seeing how the model moves.
Models exported from max or maya may have much higher bone weights as the default isn't for games.
One thing I personally do is pack my textures like unreal does and make my own default shaders. Unity default shafer uses a whole bunch of separate textures and alphas. Uhg.
I tend to have a masks map that has metal/roughness/ao. My normal maps are usually bc5.
Sound and music packs are MASSIVE. Pick just what you need in a separate project.
Sometimes starting a clean project and carefully moving across your work bit by bit is the best way forward on a bloated project. Producers will be scared but this is the "sunk cost fallicy". The saving is speed and ease going forward.
Hi all. For those just joining me from my activism and game posts, this is me:
I am mostly known as a senior freelance character artist. My first game shipped in 1998 and I have been working in film, TV, games, advertising and miniatures ever since.
My big break was being the main character artist for Unreal Tournament 04. I designed the Skaarj from concept through to final in game model, textures and rig. Also many of the heroes like Jakob.
Prior to that I headed up the art department at Bigworld, the MMOG engine company that became World of Tanks etc. This was our (sadly cancelled) original xbox mmog game Citizen Zero.
I am an intersex person who had gender dysphoria and transitioned.
Living as a 'man', I was successful in my career and lived a good middle class life with a healthy love life- a series of long term partners and I eventually married my college crush.
However, everything always felt wrong. Like, I wasn't in the right place, or I was going through the motions. I hung out with male friends but didn't really click, and just kinda nodded and played my part. I had this idea I was a good dude, feminist and pretty 'normal'.
This is known in psychology as 'mirroring'... you behave not as you experience the world, and how you feel... but in the way that the society accepts you. You tell crude jokes to your mates, locker room talk, you repeat the jokes they tell you... your world view is copied.
Video games are a great form of self care. Immersing yourself in a world you can make a difference in can ease the feeling of disempowerment in the face of global horrors. Helps you survive.
Many of us are watching the world in fear today, and feeling powerless.
Video games can be a vent for your rage, they can be a way to experience a body or a life you are robbed of by cruel legislators.
You can use video games to control your emotional state- like a massage for your anxiety.
Escapism, when used as a tool of concious self care, is a powerful thing.
So I am not saying that you should just put on a VR helmet and ignore the world burning, what I am saying is there is a tool at your disposal to put your helpless feelings. Keep yourself sane.
One of my favourite moments in Peacemaker is a shot of one of the characters in physio after injury. The joy on the character's face when they take a step is brutally honest and a very real moment we rarely see in superhero movies.
Quick artist tip- there is absolutely no instances when you wanna have lighting get into your nostrils like this. This can occur for a number of reasons but...
Most often it is because there is no AO bake obscuring highlights from appearing.
If you use fresnel (pronounced frennell) effects in your shader to make peach fuzz and glancing highlights, always mask this by your AO.