Performance improvements and mesh simplification

Introduction

If your scene fails to load, takes a long time to load, or runs with a low frame rate, it might mean that the geometry of the scene is too heavy. In that case you may want to use our built-in mesh simplification tool.

Shapespark editor has a built-in simplification that slims down the scenes. This increases performance of the scene and decreases its size - making the scenes load faster. All new scenes have the simplification enabled by default at a reasonable level. Depending on the scene, mesh simplification can provide up to a 70% reduction in triangle count and mesh buffer size without compromising the look of the scene.

Scene statistics

You can see how many triangles your scene has in the Object’s Tab. The information is in the Scene statistics panel and may look like this. (These are scene statistics taken from the example-room scene).

As you can see the triangles count was reduced from 1,175,590 to 490,195 - which increases the performance of the scene significantly, especially if you want the scene to be viewed on weaker mobile devices.

Usage

1. Open your scene and head to the Objects tab

2. Choose your desired level of simplification and run Simplify

These settings control the simplification for each scene.. If you choose "None" for the level, you can still select some objects to be simplified by using a custom simplification level. If you disable the "Enable meshes simplification" option, no object will be simplified regardless of the custom simplification level of any object.

Simplification of the scene is a very fast process - in most cases it will take just a few seconds, unlike a post-process or bake. You can apply the simplification without needing to bake the scene again. However, baking the scene automatically will also simplify the scene using the settings from the Meshes auto-simplification panel.

Possible issues

We are working continuously to improve the simplification and to minimize the number of scenarios when an artifact occurs. However, in some cases when the level of simplification is too high, some artifacts may be created:

Lightmap distortion

This happens because the simplification is done after the baking, this means that sometimes the UVs may displace themselves and as a result create these kind of black patches. The way to fix this is to lower (or disable) simplification for the object that is affected by this side-effect.

After lowering the level from High to Normal this artifact disappears as seen below:

Note that in some cases you may need to use even lower levels or even disable the simplification for the object altogether.

Geometry artifacts

Some meshes may be optimized too aggressively and they can become too jagged or even some holes can be created. To fix this find the mesh that is affected by this and lower or disable its custom simplification level.

Further optimizations

If the built-in mesh simplification didn’t help enough with your geometry and the performance issues still persist, you may use specialized tools for optimizing geometry.

1. The Objects tab lists objects sorted by their triangle count, so the most complex object is at the top. You can see the number of triangles of the selected object in the Object panel.
2. In the case of a group object you might need to analyze the content of the group to identify nested complex object. To expand the group click on an arrow next to the object name. Then, check the triangle count of the nested objects. If necessary, analyze the object hierarchy even deeper.
3. Another important thing concerns high poly instances - Shapespark is reading all the tris. Even when you use instances your graphic card needs to render all the tris. So the only way to make the tris count smaller will be to optimize objects that are instanced.

These tools are recommended for optimizing geometry in 3ds Max and Blender:

• 3ds Max - ProOptimizer Modifier
• Blender - Decimate Modifier