Tips for High Performance Art
While performance is often thought of as a programmers problem, the truth is that even some simple changes to how art is authored can have a drastic affect on a games performance. Unfortunately programmers suck at divulging much of this information – something I hope to remedy somewhat in this post. As with anything performance related, this isn’t an absolute list of rules to live by – some will depend on the architecture of the engine you’re working with, others on the particular scene, and yet others on the artistic look and style of the game. It’s also by no means comprehensive; I think this will likely spill over into another blog post. It’s best to discuss with your rendering team how (and if) each of these impact your game.
Pixel Quads and Pixie Dust
A few days ago an artist asked me for information on specular behaviour for materials, to which I sent him a link to the post Technofumbles.