Zoning an outdoor area.
by penbit · in Torque 3D Professional · 10/23/2009 (4:39 pm) · 5 replies
On a large terrain that has tons of bushes, rocks and trees, if I divide the whole area into four zones, I can gain significant boost in fps. I can overcome the "popping up other zones" issue with correct placement of portals etc. but one thing I can't fix is that once you are in the zone, there is no more sky. Does it make sense to ask for the zone render the sky as well as if it's roof is "open"...
Or simply the questions is, are zones meant to be zoning indoor levels only?
Other than lods and compressed textures what kind of outdoor-mission optimization tricks that I should be aware of?
Or simply the questions is, are zones meant to be zoning indoor levels only?
Other than lods and compressed textures what kind of outdoor-mission optimization tricks that I should be aware of?
#2
10/23/2009 (5:49 pm)
hmmmm, I read that thread before but I now I get it by what you mean "ceiling of the zone"... Thanks, will try. 
#3
I'm surprised as i wouldn't have expected using zones like you are improving the performance.
Can you post some screens of your scene and how you have your zones setup?
10/27/2009 (5:30 am)
@penbit - Yea the zones are ment for optimizing interiors and not really outdoor areas.I'm surprised as i wouldn't have expected using zones like you are improving the performance.
Can you post some screens of your scene and how you have your zones setup?
#4
I'm generally happy with the performance I'm getting from torque3d, I'm just trying to find out my limits before I take a serious dive into designing our levels/prototypes.
The scene is a reasonable terrain, ( 1 mile x 1 mile roughly with several 2048x2048 textures)with 50 or so rock meshes, 30 or so ruined structures and cottages and reasonable amount of trees and foliage. All tree leaves cast shadows and they are animated slightly to simulate wind effect. Usual polycount and material optimization tricks are already applied to all meshes. Also the scene has two medium sized lakes and one small river. In all areas zones off and on bring back 15-20 fps gain at least. This might be an important number once the place is swarming with ai.
This is how I place the four zones, like I said, this is not optimal placement, since zone transition is not smooth at all but that can be fixed with careful design.
This is top view area
images.bittersense.com/torquezones1.jpg
This is with zones on, framerate is 56
images.bittersense.com/torquezones2.jpg
Same scene with zones off, framerate is 36
images.bittersense.com/torquezones3.jpg
In some other areas framerate goes up to double sometimes.
I understand zoning is generally for indoors area but in early days of unreal engine(before it became an additive engine) we used this trick to zone large outdoor areas. Instead of room-corridor-room approach, you can design your outdoor area as valley-plateau-valley and zone it carefully. The player will move from one large area to another one through narrow-passageway kind of valleys.
Using portals like Picasso suggested for "roof" so that we can see the sky can do the trick but that portal placement might become tricky and I don't know if large portals like this will effect performance. I.e, in unreal big portals were a big no-no so I don't know the deal about big portals with Torque3d, I'd like to hear your comment on this.
My whole point is to understand the whole bottle-neck of optimization. Polycount, lods and compressed textures are must, I know, I'm trying to find out other tricks. For instance, I guess you suggested in some other thread about shape replicators vs. hand-placed trees and I followed that. I can say easily, hand-placing trees is much more efficient than using shape replicators , thanks for the tip.
One funny note, this whole scene I'm working on at the moment renders much faster "at night". I placed around randomly 35 points lights with 20-25 radius and all are shadow casting and the frame rate is much better than day time, maybe because moon doesn't cast canopy tree shadows, right?
10/27/2009 (10:32 am)
Tom, I can safely say the frame rate is doubled with zones, although I just placed them in a sloppy manner. With careful planning big vistas with lots of objects is very possible with very smooth fps.I'm generally happy with the performance I'm getting from torque3d, I'm just trying to find out my limits before I take a serious dive into designing our levels/prototypes.
The scene is a reasonable terrain, ( 1 mile x 1 mile roughly with several 2048x2048 textures)with 50 or so rock meshes, 30 or so ruined structures and cottages and reasonable amount of trees and foliage. All tree leaves cast shadows and they are animated slightly to simulate wind effect. Usual polycount and material optimization tricks are already applied to all meshes. Also the scene has two medium sized lakes and one small river. In all areas zones off and on bring back 15-20 fps gain at least. This might be an important number once the place is swarming with ai.
This is how I place the four zones, like I said, this is not optimal placement, since zone transition is not smooth at all but that can be fixed with careful design.
This is top view area
images.bittersense.com/torquezones1.jpg
This is with zones on, framerate is 56
images.bittersense.com/torquezones2.jpg
Same scene with zones off, framerate is 36
images.bittersense.com/torquezones3.jpg
In some other areas framerate goes up to double sometimes.
I understand zoning is generally for indoors area but in early days of unreal engine(before it became an additive engine) we used this trick to zone large outdoor areas. Instead of room-corridor-room approach, you can design your outdoor area as valley-plateau-valley and zone it carefully. The player will move from one large area to another one through narrow-passageway kind of valleys.
Using portals like Picasso suggested for "roof" so that we can see the sky can do the trick but that portal placement might become tricky and I don't know if large portals like this will effect performance. I.e, in unreal big portals were a big no-no so I don't know the deal about big portals with Torque3d, I'd like to hear your comment on this.
My whole point is to understand the whole bottle-neck of optimization. Polycount, lods and compressed textures are must, I know, I'm trying to find out other tricks. For instance, I guess you suggested in some other thread about shape replicators vs. hand-placed trees and I followed that. I can say easily, hand-placing trees is much more efficient than using shape replicators , thanks for the tip.
One funny note, this whole scene I'm working on at the moment renders much faster "at night". I placed around randomly 35 points lights with 20-25 radius and all are shadow casting and the frame rate is much better than day time, maybe because moon doesn't cast canopy tree shadows, right?
#5
10/27/2009 (11:38 am)
I think that shadows from pointlights cull when the player isn't near them = more performance because less shadow rendering depending on player poisition. Obviously you can't do that with the omnipresent sun. 
Torque Owner Ivan Mandzhukov
Liman3D
Look at this thread here:
www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/100295