AI 3D & Game Assets7 minLesson 55 of 60
Optimizing AI Assets for Real-Time Performance
Generated assets often look great and run badly. They can carry far more geometry and texture resolution than a game needs, and a scene full of them will tank your frame rate. Optimization is the unglamorous step that makes AI assets shippable rather than just impressive in a viewer.
The optimization checklist
- Reduce polycount: decimate or retopologize dense meshes to a sensible budget.
- Right-size textures: a small prop does not need a huge texture map.
- Use levels of detail so distant objects render cheaper versions.
- Combine materials where possible to cut draw calls.
Budget before you generate a hundred
Decide your polycount and texture budgets per asset class up front. It is far easier to optimize against a target than to discover, after filling a level, that every rock costs ten times what it should.
Profile in your actual engine, on your actual target hardware. An asset that is fine on a high-end PC can be unplayable on a phone. The frame budget, not the viewer, is the real test of whether an asset is ready.
How to Create 3D Models for Games (Meshy)Covers the path from generation to engine-ready, performant 3D assets.meshy.ai