[RELEASED] Mesh Combine Studio 2 (Boost Performance)

Hi @eagle555 ,

questions before purchasing the asset...

1. will it VR?
2. does it work with procedural levels such as Dungen or Dungeon Architect?
3. will it support UV2 for lightmapping?

Initially we are using simple mesh combine for our game, but when creating more complex scenes, our fps for our game in VR took a nosedive.

 

I found this asset today and it seems like a great tool and could help me to optimize games on the Wii U. I tried your TestDungeonArchitext demo and it showed significant improvements and so I was very encouraged. So I decided to try the ModularCityAlleyPack demo as well. However, in that demo, it's very strange. There are a few areas and viewpoints that MCS shows a slight 3-5 fps improvement (sometimes 8-12 fps), but in other cases it is either almost even... See below:




...or in some cases, having MCS off is significantly better. See below:




Are these the same results others are seeing with this Modular Alley pack demo? I'm running the demo in 1280x720, Windowed Mode on Fantastic settings. The video card in my test system is AMD FirePro W5100. It's not my development system, but I was just testing to see the differences.

[EDIT]
In most cases it is either even or MCS off is better.

 

I'm not familiar with that pack, but several art assets are released with an already optimized demo scene.

 

There is a download from the MCS asset page for the Modular Alley demo. You can download it and run it to see your results. This is a demo provided by the MCS author and you would think would have been optimized correctly, but it doesn't appear to be.

[EDIT]
Here is the link to the demo:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qvvx00tjarp3chd/MCS_Demo_ModularCityAllayPack.zip?dl=0

 

Yeah, the Alley demo had me scratching my head, though over something else that I inquired about back on December 10th, but @eagle555 skipped over my question:

However, to help you, I re-downloaded the demo and matched the camera as best I could to your screenshots and took comparison shots. Win10, 720p, windowed, Fantastic, GTX 1070:



Could be GPU-related. Hope this helps.

 

Question. Does this work in conjunction with Unity Occlusion Culling or is it meant to replace it? I assume they work together, but I'd rather not assume.

Weird. Yours is definitely working great. So this might depend on CPU/GPU whether it works or not. Which leaves me only one choice but to buy and try on the Wii U to see if it'll like it or not. Or perhaps my video drivers need updating. I'll try that as well.

 

I've not had the time to setup a proper testing environment for this since I originally asked the question, but I scheduled myself to do some rigorous MCS tests mid-January, so if @eagle555 doesn't respond by then I should have some solid information to share here. I'll just say that if they don't work together MCS will be unusable for me, but I prefer to assume for now that they do.

 

I actually didn't mean to post that question. Unity forum somehow remembered that I was typing that question and tacked it onto the next post I sent. I found the answer on the asset store page. It is definitely meant to work with Occlusion Culling.

 

I've purchased this and will try tonight on the Wii U to see if it helps any. Really praying this one shows performance improvements. It could be a game changer for what I'm developing.

 

So far so good. I have run the TestScene on the Wii U and with MCS on it gets 60 fps and when it's off it only gets 1.2 fps. Now if an actual game scene can have similar results then this is one amazing product. I'll try next on the Catacombs scene from Village Interiors pack.

 

Results so far in actual game scenes for me have been not good. I've tried 2 scenes from 2 different asset packs and both times I see a performance drop when using MCS in the editor. And on the Wii U I see absolutely identical performance. I'm either doing something wrong or this isn't working.

[EDIT]
The interesting thing, however, is that when I look at the statistics in the Inspector for MeshCombiner, it shows massive reduction in Batching and a decent reduction in polygon counts as well. Yet it seems to have no affect whatsoever on improving performance.

 

don't you have your tris and verts count increased? That's what bothering me...as i explained shadow casters are much lower but tris and verts go up so i don't know what to think.. And Nath is not here very often to respond. The entire DRONE team seems to be quite busy!!

Will make a big test in my project to see ...

 

That means your bottleneck is elsewhere, which you can only find out via profiling.

 

Yeah, I was thinking of that possibility, but I believe that's highly unlikely considering the scene is not that complicated and I see no reason why there would be any such bottleneck. But I'll take a look at the profiler and see if there is something non-obvious that is killing it.

 

No. See my results for 3DForge Catacombs scene:

 

I'm starting to get to the root of the issue. I just noticed that I'm getting the following console output for my converted catacombs scene:

"No matching GameObjects with chosen search options are found for combining."

This makes no sense though considering the Vertex And Triangle Count information I posted above is clearly showing that it's doing something. I'll keep digging, but if anyone has any ideas I'm all ears.

[EDIT]
To clarify, I only get the "No Matching GameObjects..." error when running on the Wii U. It doesn't show that in editor mode. However, performance in editor mode is still worse than with MCS off. Going to check profiler now in editor mode to see if there is another bottleneck.

 

Checking the profiler in editor mode the difference I'm seeing is with the following:

ShadowsPrepareShadowmap
RenderDeferred.Lighting

Both of these take more time when MCS is on. I sampled a few times and here is an example result:

MCS Off

ShadowsPrepareShadowmap 1.34
RenderDeferred.Lighting .5​

​

MCS On​

ShadowsPrepareShadowmap 1.57
RenderDeferred.Lighting 1.57​

 

I'm seeing now that I am actually getting better results in editor with current settings. I get about 160 fps at the start of the Catacombs scene in MCS mode and about 130 fps with it off. I'm not sure at what point it changed. Maybe I was more focused on the Wii U results and didn't notice the difference in editor. Anyway, I still have to figure out why it doesn't think there are any meshes to combine on the Wii U. This part makes no sense. I would expect some frame rate improvements if I could get past this issue.

 

Ugh. I just noticed that with MCS On that it's actually losing some geometry. Probably why the Tris/Verts count was lower. Lots of meshes are just disappearing after it combines. That could also be why performance is better in MCS mode for this scene. Also, found that I can pre-combine the meshes if I don't check Combine Runtime so I'll try that on the Wii U. But missing geometry is not a good thing.

 

This is frustrating. The documentation doesn't really say "how" to use this. I tried pre-combining meshes, but I know lighting isn't going to work so I re-baked the lighting and everything just looks horrible. It looks like the texturing is all wacko now. Performance is much improved in-editor, but it's got missing geometry and wacko textures/lighting. I could sure use some support for this.

 

Definitely need some best practices documentation, or even a quick video. And I'm mystified that his posted 1.16b patch from Nov. 28 was never updated on the store.

 

I was able to fix lighting by copying baked lighting and I can get it to run on Wii U by pre-combining meshes, but I still have the vanishing geometry issue. I thought it might be occlusion culling, but I re-baked that and it's still missing geometry. Can't work on this anymore today, but at least some progress made.

 

Had an inspiration and it turned out to be correct. The Backface Culling feature is what caused the geometry to vanish. When I turned this off then the geometry returned. However, performance also took a nose dive. That was the one thing actually improving performance. Perhaps there are settings that will allow that to work correctly. I'll have to try later and see.

 

Yeah, from what I understand this is for geo that will never been seen by the player camera.

 

Right, but it's eliminating meshes that are clearly visible to the camera. It's an algorithm that really isn't working. Unless I'm just using it wrong.

 

Hi @eagle555 or anyone could answer these questions,

questions before purchasing the asset...

1. will it VR?
2. does it work with procedural levels for Dungen, since Dungeon Architect is able to?
3. will it support UV2 for lightmapping?

Initially we are using simple mesh combine for our game, but after when creating more complex scenes, our fps for our game in VR took a nosedive.

 

Hi guys, maybe I know why vertex count increase after combine.
I find that it's happen when I use point light with shadow casting.
As I guess it can be something like that:
Point light basicly a 6 cameras that render scene to shadow cubemap, and when we use separate mesh, some of mesh can be skipped from pointlight frustum. But when we combine object we 100% include all scene with a lot of vertecies,
and point light render scene 12 times, this ruining fps and we can't do with this nothing, we only can play with chunks size
I thought, maybe I can just bake all my light, simply and good for performance.
But I meet new problem. Unity lightmaps missing specular component of lights, and scene just died
So actual solution use mixed lightmode

 

Hi
Does anyone have some experience with SpeedTree and MeshCombineStudio?

I face some problems:

• MCS won´t find all of my trees in the scene unless I put the "Use Vertex Input Limit LOD" to 1
• MCS won´t find the different LOD levels of the trees and just combines all LOD levels in one

Would be great if someone can help me.

Thanks!

 

I'm having a problem here.. Everytime I try to combine, the verts and tris increase! How can I solve this? Also I'm not noticing any big differences ?

 

Author hasn't posted here in a month. Hope @eagle555 is OK.

 

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the absence. Yes I'm ok, just got way too busy with preparing for our crowdfunding campaign for D.R.O.N.E. which is expected to launch in beginning of this February. Also since we are working on a public demo that we released to our moderators and a few Youtubers (who gave us tons of feedback), so having my hands full with preparing and programming, but I will make time and be back soon to help solve all issues.

Nathaniel

 

Great news!

 

same thing here, the author will revert soon ...hopefully the asset store page says 35doll special sale and 70 doll regular price!! at this price i'm sure MCS can do more than we've figured out till now...I'm gonna have a big session of Unity this week end guess i'll try MCS in my main project!

 

Guys, verts and tris count increase is not a bug of this asset or any combiner, if you make handmade combine in 3d editor you see same result. It happen because without combine mesh are separated and they can miss from light frustum but when it single object, light frustum can include to render.

Point light basicly a 6 cameras that render scene to shadow cubemap, and when we use separate mesh, some of mesh can be skipped from pointlight frustum. But when we combine object we 100% include all scene with a lot of vertecies,
and point light render scene 12 times, this ruining fps and we can't do with this nothing, we only can play with chunks size

 

I'm afraid you are mistaken. I don't have any single light in my scene yet still the verts and tris get doubled when I combine.. So it's probably not the point light..

 

Yo using light ? Even directional light increase verts count

Actually realtime shadow increase tris and verts count

 

Even if you don't have any lights, the fact that some meshes don't get culled anymore still applies.

 

Yep camera frustum capture more meshes and verts count are increasing. Only way to fix it create per vertex culling, but i think it will be so hard to create and debug every situation, but I think it can increase perfomance dramatically

 

Hi all, Didin't find the time to play with it, anyone has some new feedback with this asset?
Cheers

 

The support here is abysmal.

 

It’s unfortunate cause it’s a great asset :/

 

to be abysmal it would need to be ....
very disapointing till now hope it will change....

 

Same issue here. We aren't using light baking.

Here's two of the same object side-by-side. They look identical before combining, after combining one is just about black:

 

Ya, I told Nath before supporting a game and assets, its not easy...one will suffer or both...... This is why I didn't sell assets.....I been supporting Nath for years and noticed he don't reply on Skype in months, I'm making a game, run a company , family to,but not to bash him, great guy, and works hard, sometimes you have to pick which ones you want to support, we are making games too and some will suffer due to no support, or lack of..

So I would of never sold another asset...if I was him, even though its a great tool.... again don't take this wrong, he is a great guy and before gave awesome support, so , he needs to decide, what he can handle, or hire someone to help him. as our games suffer as well, I used TC1, TC2 for years, but I had to ditch TC2, due to issues I had.. and I hated to do it but I have to make a living, I even pulled this asset. due to some issues.. anyways hopeful he understands where we are coming from..... and I been a huge supporter for years and still want to be but its tough right now..




Right now I know he is right near his campaign as well for his new game, so that I bet takes up alot of his time, he works with Becoming and Tom from RTP, I have seen RTP suffer as well, from competition....in my opinion, great asset but its behide in terms of todays standards...and competition.. Sorry guys not here to beat on them but I supported for years, and my game suffered due to this before until with a heavy heart I had to decide , business over friendship...


I hope to see there assets on top one day as Tom and Nath both are talented guys......

Please don't take this as a bash post, but as my experience as of the last 6 months or so.


PS I so may reason I pulled it, so if you are ok, with missing features some bugs but nothing horrible. , the tool worked great......So I still suggest to buy it.. he does reply to most emails so I do suggest to try that, sometimes it may take a few days or so, sometimes not. So I suggest to email for support to get better faster support.. He don't come here that often due to reasons stated.

 

New update for WorldComposer is out today, so here's hoping @eagle555 will return shortly.

 

That's good news! But worldComposer really needed a fix
Anymay it's just a matter of time i hope @eagle555 will turn MCS into a definitve optimisation tool with texture atlas and so on...to thank his investors!

 

that would be great indeed because the asset is top notch.

For the triangles/vertices augmentation it's due to shadow casting. if you turn it off, it will remains the same numbers. Mesh Baker have the exact same problem, so it's not due to that asset.

hope it helps.

 

Yes it helps!! Many thanks!

 

Hello everyone,

Sorry for the delay of my come-back, like Recon says it's indeed very tricky sometimes to keep up with everything and one has to suffer, it's kinda impossible to do these jobs at the same time (supporting 3 Assets, doing a job of 3 people on our game). I'm working like 12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week for extended periods of time without a decent break. Still very busy with the last bits for our Crowdfunding campaign for D.R.O.N.E, which we will announce very soon. We worked for the last 2.5 years to get to this point and we cannot afford to fail, so I had to put my priorities there, hope you all understand.

As for Skype I don't use it much anymore, our gaming team moved to Discord and we are really happy with it (e.g. it has way more features than Skype and it allows to categories chatting/voice channels). I will look into making a Discord server for support instead of Skype.

Also we released our first demo to our moderators and our Youtubers (last Christmas), they gave very good feedback, still quite a bit of work to get the first demo ready for the backers and squeeze all reported bugs out.

I also got delayed because I had to convert WorldComposer to C# as Unity stopped supporting Unity script. I updated TerrainComposer2 as well for it to work correctly in Unity2017.3

However I'd like to squeeze any remaining bugs out of MCS. The issues with sometimes geometry disappearing and incorrect material assignment, does this also happen when Multi Threading is disabled? It might be a race condition...

Nathaniel

 

So glad you are back, because this asset is just amazing.

Keep up your great work.