Anyone know if Scene Optimiser includes texture array tools?

[SuspectPlayerAU]

Trying to work out if this scene optimiser is actually worth it, and a huge part of optimisation for me with levels is creating texture arrays to reduce draw calls. So I'd like to know if the tool has something for this, whether its automatic. Also interested to know if there is a tool for converting Shaders to more simple shaders to boost performance.

[Peter]

@SuspectPlayerAU Not yet, we are considering to add texture arrays / baking atlases at some point in the future to further enhance its capabilities. Could you please briefly share how you are using texture arrays currently? (It would be great for us to know how your current workflow is when creating those, so when we add a texture array capability we can create it in such way that it fits nicely in that workflow).
There is currently no tool for Shader conversion either, but this is something we could add as well It would be relatively simple to go over the materials during the combination and swap out the shader while mapping some of the textures / settings over to a more performant shader.

[SuspectPlayerAU]

Thanks Peter,

For VR fps, I try to get everything running with windows static batching, depending on platform I try to get as close to 40 batches from every perspective within the map to allow for all the other performance taxing stuff that goes with the scene to run the games on Oculus Quest.

I've been using Texture Array Inspector to create the texture arrays, which is free but very limited, and slow to use.

But it has a lot of the main requirements, so I can create a Texture2D array asset, and add my textures.

I then use Mesh Kit to separate and rebuild UV's and apply the texture arrays using the specified index number of the texture in the array.

I also manually go through the entire scene grouping objects together that sort of match up with the occlusion culling so that I'm only rendering whatever is absolutely necessary, and not rendering the stuff the player can't see. 

Then I need to group the light baking maps, which can screw over everything if I have too many baked light maps or maps that are for objects not visible to the player, its a pain in the butt and can remove the automatic batching of unity. 

The other thing is matching LOD's, going through each mesh individually could be sped up if the LOD's are generated and having the matching arrays applied to them so they batch at the right distances etc. 

When preparing the textures for their arrays, I'd first determine their resolution and compression based on the distancing from the players perspective, and vary between 512 res (Far) to 2k res (Close), taking into consideration the target platform.

I also need to make sure each texture is using the same shaders, also so being able to select which features each array has would be cool, as some of the surfaces look better in VR with heightmaps instead.

My process is not the best, but if I had a button that could just convert the scene with these sort of things in mind it would certainly beneficial to anyone wanting to get their high fidelity work onto low end hardware and mobiles, using Unity.

I don't know if any of this is helpful. But cheers anyway.

[Peter]

Thanks for the detailed description, that is super helpful! I cannot guarantee how much of the workflow we would be available to cover, but it sounds like some of it could be automated for sure. We will review this as we further develop the Scene Optimizer tool.