FPS Optimization and Clutter: Help Needed

[3vilg3nius]

Okay so I've been working on this for a while...and have slowly been adding content from other mods into mine with permissions for most some not yet...but that's cool because its not even close to being ready...that said...here's my dilemma.

 

There are quite a few weapon mods I have integrated and some have pretty detailed textures...I've created numerous STATIC world models used for display purposes. But I'm hitting an FPS barrier...I know it is because I might have to many very detailed models/textures close together, but Its odd, because some take up around 8-10 MB with regards to M# at the bottom of the GECK...where it gives CELL percentage and MB used as so on. But others which are nearly the same model, only using a different texture of the same resolution, size, but merely colored differently are quite small in size.

 

EXAMPLE: The 3 1911's are identical, they use the same Model, the only difference is the texture, and all 3 textures are the same size, resolution, they use the same normals; the only difference is the coloring...and the one you'd think would take up more MB to render, the shiny colored one, is actually the smaller size in GECKs render window. The Top Bi-Tone Dark and the Bottom Black one are 8 MB in GECK and the Middle shiny two-tone is only 1 MB. Its weird. Any help or advice on how to optimize these 1st person textures so the game doesn't freeze up in this room would be greatly appreciated.

 

http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/df287e1fe0d49936f082b9e415ec74246g.jpg

[pkleiss]

The only things I can offer are to place less objects in your cell or add room markers and portals.

[fap6000]

Yah it's because of lights, go back to square one an learn about lighting optimization on the GECK main page http://geck.bethsoft.com/index.php/Main_Page It's something like if there are 25 items in a room then 4 lights on those (radius wise) Then you end up with 100 calculations on those items or something. You can fit about 80 very high resolution world models into a cell, but if you put too many lights in there it wouldn't work very well at all.

 

Bethesda would answer your question with "use low res world models" thus double the amount of work, but they are a big company they can afford it.

 

It could be use low res world models on the items using the most system resources, thus cutting that work in half, so not so bad.

 

Most of us would answer your question by saying, split up your cells, so not too much in any one, this also avoids the hassle an extra work from having to create portals an room markers. Portals an room markers are for huge vast almost never ending cells, you know huge vaults an such. Also the type of walls an floors you use can also eat up quite a bit of your overall loading time an Mb size the render window gives you in GECK.

 

The underlying issue is going to be the quality of the meshes an textures. Using a weapon model for a world model the mesh has moving parts nodes, an all kinds of extra data, the world model is basicly a static mesh, that does nothing but look good an have a havok mesh. I wouldn't really know how to create one ,but I figure it's just a matter of turning a weapon mesh, into a static/havok mesh. I'd check the raw data size of the meshes an if some of them were too large, maybe build a Go model, you know SuchAnSuchGO.nif You won't find a huge amount of performance here.

 

Textures you can find a huge amount of performance. This deals with how much of a texture god the person that made the texture is. Most idiots will leave textures uncompressed in 2048 maps or larger. I say idiots because you can shrink that texture in 96 pixels per inch supersampling down to 1024 an then compress it into DXT 1 (No Alpha) at 8:1 compression or DXT 5 (estimate alpha) in about 4:1 compression, this being because DXT 1 ignores alpha (transparent textures) All that mumbo jumbo, but still keep 99% of the detail of the 2048 map. Chaos perfomrance http://fallout3nexus.com/articles/article.php?id=208

 

As an example I've seen a weapon using a 16,000k defuse (base) texture, then it also had a 5000k sized Normal map. Most of the time you only need 2048 for something the size of a persons body or larger. 4096 is anything bigger than a truck. Most weapons, certianly weapons using many different parts, can use 1024 sized maps an still look HD. The less photorealistic the texture is the more you can shrink it, those blury textures can shrink down to 256 or 512 if you wanted. 1024 is a good number for weapons though. If the weapon used say 5 very small textures on 5 different parts of the mesh, then 512 would work for these.

 

Back to the example, the texture was 16,000k because it was poorly made, no DXT compression, no mipmaps, plus it was 4096 size, I'll take that open it with paint.net, Resize it to 2048, save it, open it again, Resize it to 1024, you know in 96 pixels per inch best quality supersamlping, Then since it's a defuse map, and there is no alpha (see thru transparent textures) I'll use DXT-1, and also encode the mipmaps when it's saved (rather than create seperate mipmaps like bethesda) Now the texture is roughly 600k, Doing the same thing on the normal map only in DXT-5, you end up with 1300k .

 

 

[3vilg3nius]

Yah it's because of lights, go back to square one an learn about lighting optimization on the GECK main page http://geck.bethsoft.com/index.php/Main_Page It's something like if there are 25 items in a room then 4 lights on those (radius wise) Then you end up with 100 calculations on those items or something. You can fit about 80 very high resolution world models into a cell, but if you put too many lights in there it wouldn't work very well at all.

 

Bethesda would answer your question with "use low res world models" thus double the amount of work, but they are a big company they can afford it.

 

It could be use low res world models on the items using the most system resources, thus cutting that work in half, so not so bad.

 

Most of us would answer your question by saying, split up your cells, so not too much in any one, this also avoids the hassle an extra work from having to create portals an room markers. Portals an room markers are for huge vast almost never ending cells, you know huge vaults an such. Also the type of walls an floors you use can also eat up quite a bit of your overall loading time an Mb size the render window gives you in GECK.

 

The underlying issue is going to be the quality of the meshes an textures. Using a weapon model for a world model the mesh has moving parts nodes, an all kinds of extra data, the world model is basicly a static mesh, that does nothing but look good an have a havok mesh. I wouldn't really know how to create one ,but I figure it's just a matter of turning a weapon mesh, into a static/havok mesh. I'd check the raw data size of the meshes an if some of them were too large, maybe build a Go model, you know SuchAnSuchGO.nif You won't find a huge amount of performance here.

 

Textures you can find a huge amount of performance. This deals with how much of a texture god the person that made the texture is. Most idiots will leave textures uncompressed in 2048 maps or larger. I say idiots because you can shrink that texture in 96 pixels per inch supersampling down to 1024 an then compress it into DXT 1 (No Alpha) at 8:1 compression or DXT 5 (estimate alpha) in about 4:1 compression, this being because DXT 1 ignores alpha (transparent textures) All that mumbo jumbo, but still keep 99% of the detail of the 2048 map. Chaos perfomrance http://fallout3nexus.com/articles/article.php?id=208

 

As an example I've seen a weapon using a 16,000k defuse (base) texture, then it also had a 5000k sized Normal map. Most of the time you only need 2048 for something the size of a persons body or larger. 4096 is anything bigger than a truck. Most weapons, certianly weapons using many different parts, can use 1024 sized maps an still look HD. The less photorealistic the texture is the more you can shrink it, those blury textures can shrink down to 256 or 512 if you wanted. 1024 is a good number for weapons though. If the weapon used say 5 very small textures on 5 different parts of the mesh, then 512 would work for these.

 

Back to the example, the texture was 16,000k because it was poorly made, no DXT compression, no mipmaps, plus it was 4096 size, I'll take that open it with paint.net, Resize it to 2048, save it, open it again, Resize it to 1024, you know in 96 pixels per inch best quality supersamlping, Then since it's a defuse map, and there is no alpha (see thru transparent textures) I'll use DXT-1, and also encode the mipmaps when it's saved (rather than create seperate mipmaps like bethesda) Now the texture is roughly 600k, Doing the same thing on the normal map only in DXT-5, you end up with 1300k .

 

Thank you so much for the pointers on lighting and texture resizing/encoding/mips. I've been playing with the textures on the weapons; and I even re-textured and modeled some of the walls and such. Adding carpet, doing away with the bazillion pipes and wires on some of the vault and utility sets...but I was an RRTard and figured using a larger size and using a higher DXT encoding would make it look better...but for walls...its really pointless hehe...I actually have wall textures that are 4096 ROFL...im such an idiot.

 

But Im going to go through and rework the lighting and retex a lot of the STATIC objects and world models and see if I can't optimize it, so the game doesn't lock up the first 20 seconds into the cell. hehe.

 

Say, quick question if you get back to this...how do you get the darn tree and bush spt's to reflect light, mine are dark and shadowy, indoors of course? The GECK website is quite vague on what the various settings in the SPT files do, and when ever I change one of the settings like Speedtree or dimming value, whether I create a new ID or not, GECK crashes...weird.

 

Anyway, thanks for the detailed response...KUDOS to you and then some bud...VERY MUCH appreciated.

 

Best,

me