September 10 Weekly Update (Patreon)

This week, I did a little tree optimization, as well as worked on a new character.

While I only had a few reported framerate issues, I still want to optimize everything as much as possible.  I look at games like the Witcher 3, and get jealous of their environments.  

I looked at how I can get the trees to be a little more optimized.  

I use speed tree, which is a big help, as I can do a lot of it there.  First, I reduced the geometry on the tree model itself.  The trunks don't have a lot going on, and most of the branches I can keep low poly as they are high up and not really seen or looked at.  

Second, I've started making my own leaf textures.  By doing this myself, I can make sure as much of the texture as possible is covered.  This not only gives me a more full looking tree from less textures, but reduced the overdraw of the texture.  

Overdraw is where there is transparency on a texture or model, and Unreal Engine does not like overdraw at all.  While in some instances, its preferable to high poly geometry, you still want to reduce it as much as you can.  

The tree on the left has a lot less overdraw then the one on the right.

So while its still not perfect you can see the hot spots aren't nearly as bad.  So these reductions over the 400+ trees in the scene will really add up! 

Unrelated to trees, I started on a new character as something to relax myself a bit after getting the demo out.

He still needs a few tweaks, and I think a couple more accessories, but he's coming along pretty well!

Anyways that's it for this week!  As always I'd love to hear any comments or questions!