exporting to Unity with low poly count

ktealby

Has anyone exported DAZ studio content like V4, M4, Millennium Dog from Carrara to Unity with a low polygon count?

Has additional software been useful in the workflow?

Any advice would be appreciated!

DAZ_bfurner

ktealby said:

Has anyone exported DAZ studio content like V4, M4, Millennium Dog from Carrara to Unity with a low polygon count?

Has additional software been useful in the workflow?

Any advice would be appreciated!

I've been working with a customer on this exact thing. He gave me some input, I hope it helps you. He is using DAZ Studio.

Here you go:

Below is what I have been doing and it seems to be working on the iPhone 4, 4S, IPad 1 - 3. I have not been able to test fps on iPhone 3 yet because I don't own one.

1. Create a Texture Atlas.
2. You must combine the material groups in the Polygon Group Editor. I combined everything except for Eyelash and Tear into one group called Skin. This reduces the draw calls in Unity from around 30 to 3 on DAZ characters.
3. Next thing to do is to Decimate the character. I Decimated mine down to 20k tris (10k quads). Most people will say that is too much, but I am not experiencing any drop in fps by using a slightly larger character. Most people suggest a 1k model, but I think that is for older mobile devices. For PC or Console, they suggest 5k characters.

If after Decimating the character, if you notice white lines around the seams, simply change the UV set to Victoria 4. That fixed it for me.

Then I simply export Genesis as a .fbx image for Unity.

I plan on creating a lower poly LOD of Genesis by possibly retopolizing the character. I believe Genesis can be knocked down to 5k without too many problems. I think normal maps will allow that to happen. I haven't created any yet but plan on trying that this week.

The biggest thing is for the client to test their game. Since I am focusing on mobile, I export from Unity to XCode (Mac) and then run the Internal Profiler and watch how many fps I am running at. With the method above, I was running at around 50fps on an iPhone 4. I didn't have too much geometry for the environment in place, but I also have 20 fps to play with. The geometry on the environment can be a little lower and the Decimator works awesome for non organic items such as props and clothes.

In games such as Red Dead Redemption, if you look close, the geometry on the buildings is very basic and not as detailed as we would think. A lot of stuff is drawn in on the Texture Map.

On newer devices, the poly count isn't as critical as it use to be. Draw calls is what to what.

On my test, 25k Poly's and 22 Draw Calls run fine on the iPhone 4 and the new iPad can handle a lot more. I had as many as 70k Poly's and 53 Draw Calls running and still was able to maintain at minimum, 30fps on playback on a mobile device. If the poster is creating something for PC, those numbers can easily be higher.

Some of the things I mentioned above may not make a lot of sense, but someone working in Unity would understand it.

ktealby

Thanks a lot for the quick and detailed response. Your input was very helpful. I have quite a lot to learn in the DAZ Studio/Carrara space, as well as Unity. I am also thinking about retopolizing for polycount reduction, probably using 3dCoat.