Drawcalls VS Triangles
polycounter lvl 18
More triangles ( atlas textures ) or small tilable textures?!
Maybe this was discussed somewhere before but i didnt find it...
Hey guys!
I worked on a several titles in the last years but this questions is still not really fully answered in my head. Even my clients clouldnt clear this for me (at least not the ppl who were responsable for the outsourcing).
Example 1:
So i´ve recently worked on a project which uses huge atlas textures for one asset. With quality expectations very high the client of course wanted a big texel. The result was that we had only few "meters" on the atlas for certain objects. In the worst case a big wall. So we had to cut the wall over and over to tile the part of the atlas. Not only was this a more time consuming process but it also resulted in a much higher polycount...also it was not really possible to recycle textures easily.
But the good thing about this is that you really get your drawcalls down in larger scenes. This game had an overhead view...
Example 2:
On the opposite i worked on a AAA title ( fps ) that used many smaller ( 256-1024 ) tilable textures and different shadertechiques to get a dynamic result in game. Like blend shader, vertex colour and all that stuff. the result was quite cool, but it took of course a longer time to bring it to the unique feel you would have with an atlas only for one asset. But after a while you had a huge library of materials in the editor which could be easily recycled...The tolycount also was not an issue here because most of the textures were fully tilable.
So my question is this:
What is the better method? Is one method maybe better for a specific system? Example 1 was a PC only game and my idea was that it might be better for pc because you have lots of RAM for the big textures. And fewer materials of course result in fewer drawcalls. But wouldnt apply the drawcall issue also to the example 2 (which was a console title) or is it in general better to use more metarials because you can reuse the materials ( and therefor maybe less drawcalls )? Do consoles maybe handle drawcalls better then triangles and thats why its better to use smaller tiable textures?
As you can see this is still confusing me and i would appreciate if soomeone could share their knowledge on this!
Thanks
Maybe this was discussed somewhere before but i didnt find it...
Hey guys!
I worked on a several titles in the last years but this questions is still not really fully answered in my head. Even my clients clouldnt clear this for me (at least not the ppl who were responsable for the outsourcing).
Example 1:
So i´ve recently worked on a project which uses huge atlas textures for one asset. With quality expectations very high the client of course wanted a big texel. The result was that we had only few "meters" on the atlas for certain objects. In the worst case a big wall. So we had to cut the wall over and over to tile the part of the atlas. Not only was this a more time consuming process but it also resulted in a much higher polycount...also it was not really possible to recycle textures easily.
But the good thing about this is that you really get your drawcalls down in larger scenes. This game had an overhead view...
Example 2:
On the opposite i worked on a AAA title ( fps ) that used many smaller ( 256-1024 ) tilable textures and different shadertechiques to get a dynamic result in game. Like blend shader, vertex colour and all that stuff. the result was quite cool, but it took of course a longer time to bring it to the unique feel you would have with an atlas only for one asset. But after a while you had a huge library of materials in the editor which could be easily recycled...The tolycount also was not an issue here because most of the textures were fully tilable.
So my question is this:
What is the better method? Is one method maybe better for a specific system? Example 1 was a PC only game and my idea was that it might be better for pc because you have lots of RAM for the big textures. And fewer materials of course result in fewer drawcalls. But wouldnt apply the drawcall issue also to the example 2 (which was a console title) or is it in general better to use more metarials because you can reuse the materials ( and therefor maybe less drawcalls )? Do consoles maybe handle drawcalls better then triangles and thats why its better to use smaller tiable textures?
As you can see this is still confusing me and i would appreciate if soomeone could share their knowledge on this!
Thanks
Replies
There is no simple answer to what is better but ther's some answers for you in here i believe:
http://simonschreibt.de/gat/renderhell/