Art Pipeline Tips and Tricks: David Llewelyn

Art Pipeline Tips and Tricks
David Llewelyn
Wednesday, 10 April 13
David Llewelyn
About the Speaker

8 Years in game development and architectural visualisation. Been producing CGI for 15 years.
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David Llewelyn
About the Speaker

Born in Wales !!
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David Llewelyn
About the Speaker

Born in Wales !!
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Overview
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Overview
Prototyping in Unity. Preparing 3D assets. Texture creation. Importing in Unity. Optimization.
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Prototyping in Unity
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RobotLab and Stealth

Large number of high quality assets for distribution. Other work commitments. Some workow optimizations required.
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Prototype thoroughly in order to prevent abortive work. Identify areas of your process that can be automated and implement this early. Small savings throughout the art pipeline add-up to large overall gains.
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Use Unity primitives, or create your own custom shapes to layout levels and test your mechanics.
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Use Unity primitives, or create your own custom shapes to layout levels and test your mechanics. Make use of the Asset Store!
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Use Unity primitives, or create your own custom shapes to layout levels and test your mechanics. Make use of the Asset Store! Creating quality artwork is time consuming. Prototyping helps to identify an asset list that is 100% required.
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Go to wiki.unity3d.com and search for OBJ Exporter.
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Go to wiki.unity3d.com and search for OBJ Exporter. Editor Script that allows you to export .obj les from Unity.
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Exported OBJ is a good base to model over.
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Exported OBJ is a good base to model over. Precise snapping during polymodeling. Identication of repeatable, modular pieces. Easier to determine asset list and distribute to team members.
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With Stealth we started-off creating a number of wall panels 2m x 2m. Used standard assets controllers and cameras to test the level design. Both art and code departments could collaborate and agree on design. Reduced refactoring.
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Using this approach we managed to create a fully approved prototype very early-on. Art ts a feasible layout from the outset. Reduces the need to re-t precise artwork at the modeling stage.
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These saving meant time that could be better spent on art direction.
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These saving meant time that could be better spent on art direction.
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Summary
The main benets of this simple prototyping approach: 1. Early agreement between design, code and art. 2. Less chance of time wasting by having to re-position/re-stitch models. 3. Earlier distribution of workload amongst artists = fewer dependancies.
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Preparing 3D Assets
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Preparing 3D Assets

Group assets by commonality. Keep hierarchies as at as possible. Find a suitable taxonomy in order to organize hierarchies alphabetically. Consider a renaming script.
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Preparing 3D Assets

Reduce draw-calls by combining smaller objects. Massive objects represent a ll cost. Equalize triangles for better normal distribution.
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Preparing 3D Assets
Auto exporter scripts available through resources such as Creative Crash. Keep naming conventions consistent in your scene. OS project folders will be faster to navigate.
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Summary
When building your 3D assets: 1. Avoid time wasted drilling through recursive hierarchies. 2. Less repetitive exporting and naming in your OS. 3. Improve visual quality with good modeling practice.
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Texture Creation
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Texture Creation

Texturing is a process that is full of repetitive tasks. These are obvious cases for automation. Standardize PSDs for easier collaboration in team environments. Next-gen means even more assets!
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The Master Builder"
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The Master Builder"

www.davidllewelyn.com/v2/master-builder
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Texture Creation

Part of a suite of Photoshop actions to help automate repetitive tasks. It takes a range source maps from tools such as xNormal. Produces a standardized, exible PSD template. Lets see how it works...
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Texture Creation

Robot and Stealth include 433 unique textures. On average setting-up a PSD by hand takes around 5 minutes longer. So, thats (433 x 5) = 2165 minutes. Or,
4.5 working days!
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Image Pre-Processing
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Work in PSDs within your 3D packages project folder. Use File>Scripts>Image Processor to automatically apply actions to your images.
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Work in PSDs within your 3D packages project folder. Use File>Scripts>Image Processor to automatically apply actions to your images. This offers some distinct advantages:
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1. Flatten PSDs to reduce project size. 2. Reduce compression artifacts with lter combinations. 3. Normalize histogram levels. 4. Apply artistic effects or sharpening.
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The PVTRC format is commonly used for mobile. Can result in visible stepping or banding across gradients. Apply a hi-frequency noise to your textures to simulate dithering. Trick the PVTRC compressor.
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Summary
Processing images before import allows you to:
Reduce VCS sync times. Apply stylized lter treatments. Improve compression results for mobile textures.
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Importing into Unity
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Unity was designed to work similarly to Autodesk Maya in terms of interface. However, there are some differences when it comes to 3D.
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Scale is important for things like light-mapping and physics. Unity default unit = 1m (100cm). Maya default unit = 1cm. Default scale factor therefore = 0.01 (100x0.01)=1
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3DS Max default unit = 1m. Unity default unit = 1m. Scale factor should be set to 1. Do a cube test!
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Unity uses the left hand rule for cartesian coordinates. Same as DirectX. +X faces in the opposite direction to right handed packages. World-space rotation about Z will be in the opposite direction. This can cause complications when eyeballing values.
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3DS Max uses swivel coordinates, so Z is up, rather than Y.
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.FBX .DAE .3DS .MB .DXF and .OBJ supported. Unity also supports the embedded FBX standard.
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Texture assets can be included with your 3D model le. Great for rapid prototyping, but can clutter projects with metadata. Consider importing standard FBX
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Cleaning-Up
Duplicate or unwanted materials, textures and models can quickly build-up. This can slow the team down. I propose a quick way to tidy-up a cluttered project:
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Cleaning-Up
1. Backup!! 2. Select all your scene les from within the project panel. 3. Right-click, and select Export Package. 4. Save this somewhere outside of the Unity project folder. 5. Select the project folders containing any duplicate les you wish to remove.
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Cleaning-Up
6. Right click and Delete. 7. Right click anywhere in the project pane, select import package. 8. Select the package you just exported and reimport. 9. Voila! You should end-up with a project containing only the assets referenced by your scenes. (Dont use this on your scripts folder!!)
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Summary
When importing into Unity:
Be aware that Unity uses the Left Hand Rule for cartesian coordinates. Use the embedded FBX format for rapid prototypes. Periodically remove unwanted les or duplicates.
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Optimization
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Optimization
Use Unitys view modes to troubleshoot and optimize poor draw performance.
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Optimization

Specular component encoded in the alpha channel of the diffuse texture. Alpha view can be used to check specular maps are displaying correctly. When using PSDs, transparency on the base layer can cause specular to not come through. Useful way to troubleshoot.
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Optimization

Draw cost without visible on-screen result (except alpha). Overdraw represented in an additive colour scheme. Lighter areas represent higher levels of overdraw. Remove these polygons from your model if possible.
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Optimization

MipMaps are textures storing precomputed texture subsampling. Effectively smaller versions of the texture. Swapped at runtime to ensure texeldensity is appropriate to the nal on-screen resolution. Mipmap view shows which MipMap level is currently being used.
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Optimization
Highest (blue) mipmap level in foreground, yellow in the middle, red in the distance. Red in the foreground means textures close to the camera will appear blurry. Blue in the background means textures likely to be too high in resolution. Waste of memory.
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Optimization

Set the Max Size for your textures in the inspector. Scene should be correctly balanced in the mipmap view. Correct distribution (blue> yellow> red) ensures that memory is not being wasted.
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Optimization

Objects at same scale are statically batched. Rendered in the same draw-call. Boosts GPU performance.
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Questions?
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Art Pipeline Tips and Tricks: David Llewelyn

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Art Pipeline Tips and Tricks

About the Speaker

About the Speaker

About the Speaker

RobotLab and Stealth

Go to wiki.unity3d.com and search for OBJ Exporter.

Exported OBJ is a good base to model over.

The Master Builder"

The Master Builder"

4.5 working days!

Importing into Unity

Importing into Unity

Importing into Unity

Importing into Unity

Importing into Unity

Importing into Unity

3DS Max uses swivel coordinates, so Z is up, rather than Y.

Importing into Unity

Importing into Unity

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