How to Actually optimize your game in Unity - Complete Game Optimization Guide

Summary

This tutorial video guides viewers on optimizing Unity scenes for high performance without sacrificing quality. It starts with basic settings adjustments, such as shadow quality and graphics presets, and progresses to more advanced techniques like static batching, UI element raycast disabling, and shader optimization for mobile devices. The video also covers Unity's lighting settings, demonstrating the use of mixed lighting modes and light baking to achieve significant FPS improvements. Additional tips include physics settings, material adjustments, and the use of subjective lighting mode for dynamic shadow effects.

Takeaways

• 🎥 The video is a tutorial on optimizing performance in Unity without sacrificing visual quality.
• 🌟 The tutorial uses a nature scene with trees and stones downloaded from the Unity Asset Store.
• 🔆 Default settings on the directional light are kept for simplicity, with a minor change to the skybox color.
• 📊 Initial performance metrics show 30-40 FPS, indicating the need for optimization.
• 🌑 Shadows are optimized by changing the shadow type to 'Hard Shadows' and reducing shadow strength.
• 🔧 Graphic settings are adjusted to a medium preset to improve performance without significant visual loss.
• 🗜️ Texture compression and mip maps are utilized to reduce texture size and improve rendering efficiency.
• 📏 The far plane of the main camera is adjusted to limit the view distance and reduce the number of objects rendered.
• 🔨 Static batching is applied to static objects in the scene to reduce draw calls.
• 🛑 UI elements that are not interactive have raycasting disabled to save on processing time.
• 💡 For mobile devices, vertex lit shaders are recommended for better performance, with the option to include shadows.
• 🕹️ Physics settings are optimized by setting collision detection to 'Discrete' and disabling auto-sync transforms.
• 🌄 Lighting is optimized by using mixed or baked lighting, adjusting light map settings, and using GPU for light baking.
• ✨ Materials are simplified by disabling smoothness, specular highlights, and reflections to reduce rendering complexity.
• 🛑 GPU instancing is enabled to improve performance by reducing the computational load on the CPU.
• 🗑️ Unnecessary light maps are disabled for objects not in 3D space to save memory.
• 🔍 The subjective mode in Unity is highlighted as useful for dynamic objects that require real-time lighting updates.

Q & A

What is the main focus of the video?

The video focuses on teaching viewers how to optimize their scenes in Unity to improve performance without losing visual quality.

What is the nature of the 'nature take light' mentioned in the video?

The 'nature take light' is a lighting asset downloaded from the Unity Asset Store, which the tutorial uses to enhance the scene's environment.

What is the initial FPS of the scene before optimization?

The initial FPS of the scene is around 30 to 40, which is considered low for the scene.

How does the video suggest optimizing shadows in Unity?

The video suggests changing the shadow type of the directional light to 'Hard Shadows' and reducing the shadow strength to achieve a softer shadow effect.

What graphic settings changes are recommended in the video to improve performance?

The video recommends using the 'Medium' preset in the graphic settings, disabling anisotropic textures, setting shadow types to 'Hard Shadows Only', adjusting shadow resolution to 'Medium', and disabling VSync.

What is the purpose of adjusting texture maps in Unity as suggested in the video?

Adjusting texture maps helps in optimizing the scene by enabling only necessary texture maps, playing with the max size, and using grunge compression to reduce overall size whenever possible.

Why is adjusting the far plane distance of the main camera suggested in the video?

Adjusting the far plane distance reduces the number of objects that need to be rendered, which can improve performance by not rendering objects that are too far away from the camera.

What is the benefit of using static batching in Unity as mentioned in the video?

Static batching reduces the number of draw calls by combining multiple static objects into a single draw call, which can significantly improve performance.

How does the video suggest optimizing UI elements for performance?

The video suggests disabling raycasting on UI elements that are not interactive and setting the Canvas to sleep when not in use to reduce unnecessary checks and calculations.

What shader is recommended for mobile devices in Unity according to the video?

The video recommends using the 'Vertex Lit' shader with 'Mobile' selected for better performance on mobile devices.

What is the final FPS achieved after all the optimization steps in the video?

After all the optimization steps, the video achieves more than 500 FPS.

What is the purpose of the 'Subjective Mode' in Unity lighting?

The 'Subjective Mode' in Unity lighting is useful for cases where static objects do not move, and it allows the shadows to stay in place while dynamic objects like players move around, using different lighting calculations.

Outlines

00:00

📚 Unity Optimization Basics

This paragraph introduces the video's focus on optimizing Unity scenes for performance without sacrificing quality. The creator thanks the audience for reaching 500 subscribers and uses a nature scene from the Unity Asset Store as a practical example. The scene includes trees, stones, and a directional light with default settings, except for a change to the skybox color. The initial FPS is around 30-40, which is considered low, and the tutorial aims to improve this through various optimization techniques.

05:01

🔧 Adjusting Graphics and Shadow Settings

The second paragraph delves into optimizing graphics settings by adjusting shadow types and strengths on the directional light, and selecting medium preset quality settings to improve performance. It also covers disabling vsync, managing texture maps with compression, and adjusting the main camera's far plane distance. The goal is to maintain visual quality while significantly increasing the frame rate, which is achieved by reducing shadow quality, optimizing texture settings, and limiting the camera's view distance.

10:03

🚀 Advanced Performance Enhancements

In this paragraph, the focus shifts to more advanced optimization techniques, such as static batching to reduce draw calls, disabling unnecessary UI element raycast checks, and adjusting physics settings for better performance. The tutorial also touches on shader selection for mobile devices and disabling reflections and specular highlights to save on rendering resources. The use of GPU instancing is introduced to further boost performance. The result is a substantial increase in FPS, demonstrating the effectiveness of the applied optimizations.

💡 Lighting and Final Touches

The final paragraph discusses the lighting settings, explaining the use of mixed lighting for dynamic objects and baked lighting for static elements. It guides through the process of baking lightmaps and adjusting their resolution and size for performance. The tutorial also addresses the subjective lighting mode, which allows for dynamic lighting on static objects, and suggests further optimizations like disabling auto-sync transforms and reducing texture map generation for non-3D objects. The video concludes with a call to action for deeper exploration of lighting settings and support through Patreon.

Keywords

💡Optimizing

Optimizing refers to the process of making something as effective, efficient, or functional as possible. In the context of the video, it relates to improving the performance of a scene within Unity, a game development platform, without sacrificing visual quality. The script mentions various techniques for optimization, such as adjusting shadow quality and using specific graphic settings.

💡Unity

Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies, widely used for creating interactive games and experiences. The video's theme revolves around optimizing scenes in Unity to enhance performance. The script provides specific examples of Unity settings and assets, such as the nature take light and directional light, used to achieve optimization.

💡Shadows

In the context of 3D graphics and game development, shadows are the dark areas created when an object blocks light. The script discusses the impact of shadows on performance, suggesting changes to shadow type and strength to achieve a balance between quality and performance in Unity scenes.

💡Quality Settings

Quality settings in Unity allow developers to adjust the visual fidelity and performance of a game. The script mentions changing these settings to medium preset to optimize performance, which includes adjustments to texture resolution, shadow resolution, and shadow cascades.

💡Texture Maps

Texture maps are images applied to 3D models to give the appearance of detail and surface properties. The video script talks about enabling texture maps and adjusting their size and compression to optimize the scene's performance in Unity, without a significant loss in visual quality.

💡Farplane

The farplane, also known as the far clipping plane, is a distance at which objects in a 3D scene are no longer rendered. The script suggests adjusting the farplane distance to reduce the number of objects rendered, which can improve performance by limiting the view distance.

💡Static Batching

Static batching is a technique used in Unity to improve rendering performance by combining multiple static objects into a single draw call. The script describes marking objects as static to take advantage of static batching and reduce the number of draw calls.

💡UI Elements

UI elements refer to the graphical components used to create user interfaces in games, such as buttons, panels, and images. The script advises disabling raycasting and pixel-perfect settings on UI elements that are not interactive to save on performance.

💡Rigidbodies

In Unity, a Rigidbody is a component that allows objects to have mass and be affected by physics forces. The script mentions setting Rigidbody's collision detection mode to 'discrete' for optimization and temporarily making objects kinematic to avoid unnecessary physics calculations during the lighting baking process.

💡Shaders

Shaders are small programs that run on the GPU and determine how the surface of 3D models appear in a scene. The video script discusses using mobile shaders and vertex lit shaders in Unity for optimizing performance on different platforms, with a focus on mobile devices.

💡Lighting Settings

Lighting settings in Unity are used to define how light interacts with objects in a scene. The script covers changing the light mode to 'mixed' for dynamic objects and using 'subtractive' for baked lighting, which is crucial for achieving high performance in Unity scenes with both static and dynamic elements.

💡GPU Instancing

GPU Instancing is a technique that allows the GPU to draw multiple instances of the same object with a single draw call. The script suggests enabling GPU instancing to save CPU power and improve performance in Unity by reducing the number of draw calls.

💡Subjective Lighting Mode

Subjective lighting mode in Unity is a feature that allows for dynamic lighting to follow a specific object, such as a player character, while static objects in the scene use baked lighting. The script explains how this mode can be useful for maintaining performance while providing dynamic lighting effects.

Highlights

Introduction to optimizing performance in Unity without losing quality, celebrating 500 subscribers.

Use of a nature sky light from the Unity Asset Store for realistic environment lighting.

Default settings on the directional light for simplicity and chaining the source from a skybox to color.

Optimizing shadow quality by changing the shadow type to hard shadows and adjusting strength for a soft effect.

Adjusting graphic settings to medium preset for better performance without significant visual compromise.

Disabling vsync to improve performance in Unity projects.

Optimizing texture maps with compression and size adjustments for reduced memory usage.

Setting the far plane distance on the main camera to limit the view distance and reduce rendering load.

Increasing performance through static batching of static scene objects.

Disabling raycast targets and masks on UI elements to prevent unnecessary checks.

Using mobile shaders for Android devices to enhance performance on mobile platforms.

Adjusting light map resolution and size for optimized lighting performance.

Baking lighting with mixed mode for scenes with dynamic objects.

Matching the ambient color for dynamic objects to blend with the baked lighting.

Disabling auto sync transforms in physics settings to save on processing power.

Reducing the use of smoothness, specular highlights, and reflections for performance gains.

Enabling GPU instancing to offload some of the CPU workload.

Disabling light map generation for objects not in 3D space to save resources.

Using crunched textures with reduced size for memory optimization.

Explanation of subjective lighting mode for dynamic and static objects in Unity.

Invitation for further exploration of lighting settings and support through Patreon.

Transcripts

in this video I'm going to teach you

everything that you need to know about

optimizing your again inside of unity

to make it super performant without

losing inequality and before we get

started I just want to thank you all for

your love and support as we hit 500

subscribers and with that said let's get

started

so for this tutorial I'm gonna be using

this nature take light that I downloaded

from the unity asset store and if you

guys want to check it out I'll put a

link in the description so here's how it

looks with a bunch of trees and stones

and I've just set them all inside of

this environment game object here

I've kept default settings on the

directional light to make things easier

for you and also for the man camera here

and also for the Lighting's except for

one little change here and I've chained

the source from a skybox to color here

also if we go to edit project settings

quality

I've also capitis to its default

settings as you can see here alright

alright so now if we hit play

let's hit play and open up the stats

here you can see we get around 30 to 40

FPS which is very low considering of our

scene also we can reduce these are post

calls and matches here so let's just

start optimizing the game firstly ever

seen has too many shadows as you can see

here and they're all at the highest

quality level

so let's first like the direction light

and we can just go ahead and change the

shadow type to hard shadows here and we

can reduce the strength to like 0.75 to

get there soft shadow effect alright so

the next thing we can do is go to our

graphic settings let's go to edit

project settings and here we can see our

scene is kind of too perfect so we can

reduce the quality a little bit so

instead of changing the settings we can

choose this medium preset and it will do

just fine so let's first get rid of this

n isotropic textures and also make sure

the and the other thing is said to

resemble now let's go down and here make

sure the shadows type are set to hard

shadows only also you can just bump up

the resolution

to medium also make sure they're the

shadow cascades is said to no cost kids

alright and let's also disable this

vsync here because we won't be needing

it so let's see how it looks and it

looks awesome still so we haven't lost

any quality yet also to improve the

performance make sure your texture maps

let's get the texture Maps here instead

of textures and I only have one so make

sure you enable just 200 MIT Maps on

your texture maps come we could also

play around with the make size here so

let's see let's keep it at 512 for now

and also enable this use grunge

compression it will help reduce the

overall size whenever possible and now

let's try this out let's hit apply and I

don't think it should change any quality

here so we can go maybe a bit too though

and it starts to lower the quality so

let's just keep it at 512 awesome so now

we can select the main camera and here

as you can see we don't need to look

much far ahead it will just increase the

number of objects to welder so let's

keep the farplane 8 around 300 let's try

300 for now or maybe we could go a

little less so 200 yeah I think 200 will

do just fine

alright so now it's time to test things

out so let's see how we're doing and as

you can see we are already 50 frames up

then 4 but there is still so much we can

do to improve the performance like

producing the batches here by static

batching as most of our scene is pretty

much steady so let's like the

environment so this is all static so

let's like the environment here now

either we can select some of them or

just mark all of them as a static for

everything

so hit yes and now there will be marked

as a static let's hit play and as you

can see there are only 78 witches now

and we saved 260 by static bitching cool

so if we were to have many static

objects in our scene we could do the

same for them alright so another cool

thing that you could do is let's exit

play mode let's lick the canvas here and

here select all the UI elements that are

not going to be click on so like all the

images here and inside the image

component does that those degrees rakers

targets and masks able to if you want to

so the community doesn't keep checking

for raycast on these objects every

single firm alright and also we could

sleep the canvas and disable this pixel

perfect here because it doesn't make any

difference whatsoever and if we were to

have like rigid bodies in our scene so

let's add rigid bodies two of our

players here so if we had like these

rigid bodies up I'm just gonna set them

to is kinematic for now what you need to

check is you have these collision

detection mode set to discreet and not

continuous which will save a lot of

physics calculation time for unity

anyways I don't need them right now so

I'm just gonna remove them next thing

you could do is if you're building for

Android devices go for these shaders and

select the mobile shaders and select

this vertex lid it is supposed to be one

of the most performant shaders in unity

for mobile devices and also you could

use this for PC if you want to but if

you want to keep the shadows you might

want to try the vertex lit with

directional light which renders the

shadows also and if we hit play

as you can see it improves the

performance a bit more but for this I'm

gonna use these standard shaders so

let's get rid of this and also you could

get rid of the reflections on these

materials because we don't want them to

be reflective awesome and now for the

most important and the frustrating part

there's lighting settings

so first let's like the directional

light here and we will change the mode

so if we could either select baked or

mixed here so in our case we will select

the mix because we have some dynamic

objects like these players which will

kindly move around in the scene

vertically and we only have one light

and it weighs less like mixed and leave

everything as is go back to the lighting

step first let's slide the players here

and just disable them for now because we

don't need them in the baking process so

firstly let's change the lighting mode

to subtractive so let's change this from

shadow mask to subtractive and I'll just

show you what it does in a moment then

we have our players in the scene now we

can play around with all these settings

here I'm gonna keep this light map

resolution to as low as 10 or maybe 20

will do just fine so you would just play

around with all these settings if you

want and also I'll set the light map

size to 512 pixels for now and make sure

the compressed light map is enabled

because it will affect the overall size

of the light Maps after being pegged and

also let's change the light mapper from

progressive CPU to GPU here for faster

baking time you can play Iran with all

these settings if you want I'm gonna

leave them as is for now and hit

generate it will take a while so don't

worry and when it's finished it kind of

looks a bit weird it's because they

don't have the light my view is but oh

we can generate them inside of unity so

let's select the models here just right

all of them go to inspector panel and

inside the models layer

scroll down and you will see this

generate light my view is enable this

and you can see a bunch of settings here

so you can play around with them if you

wanted they are good as default so their

supply and I will just import everything

back here and nothing changed so yeah

that's because we have to regenerate the

lighting so let's just go ahead and

leave everything as is and hit generate

lighting and it will take a while and

voila here goes

so it looks awesome but our player

character here seem a bit off they are

more bright than the rest of the scene

and in order to fix that and go to the

lighting step find ambient color and it

will only affect of our players cut and

cuz they are the only dynamic objects

here so let's keep this somewhere around

here so the player matches the

background that's it play now oh that's

crazy fast we are now hitting around 500

FPS but there's still some changes to be

made so let's close this go to physics

and make sure the auto sync transforms

is disabled because we don't need it all

right and also let's light key materials

and if possible get rid of the

smoothness set to zero and also both

these specular highlights and

reflections too so let's remove them

because we don't need them anyway and

also let's enable this GPU instancing to

serve some CPU power and I've done the

same for this one let's hit play again

and here you can see we are getting more

than 500 FPS now which is awesome

lastly you could select all these parts

and make sure you and make sure you

disable the generate map map map maps

for them because we don't need them

because they are not in 3d space and

also we could enable this use crunch

impressions and play around with just

make size let's try to keep this as low

as possible so I'm gonna go up to as low

as 128 pixels without losing much

quality and it would save us a lot of

memory and if you want to check this out

let's hit play open up the profiler

control 7 and here if we click on

rendering click on this rendering tab

here and you can see all the sides their

textures take up so you can see all the

stuff here how many batches are there

and how many did we save and everything

you need to know and here you could see

the CPU usage works using more of the

CPUs power by using deep their loop top

down and not worry about the editor loop

because and if you want me to go deeper

into this let just let me know in the

comment section and finally let's talk

about the subjective mode so if I move

over play around the scene you can see

the shadow move with it but if we I

select one of these static objects and

try to move it the shadows stay where it

is because it's using the backlighting

while the player uses the via lighting

that's why the subjective lighting mode

is useful in cases like these and if you

want me to go deeper into lighting

settings let me know in the comment

section also and also if you want to

help me making these videos support me

on patreon and until next time see ya

you