Batching Tools

Hi bravery,
I do wish to help you but I do not have access to the code of the Advance Surface Shaders so I cannot figure out if it can work.
If you wish support for some specific shaders, send them to me at my email : ippobour at gmail dot com
I can tell you for free if they work or not with batching tools and send you a special version of batching tools that supports them for a low price.
It is preferable to include a small scene that showcases the shader intended behavior.
Kind regards,
-Ippokratis

 

Im not sure if this was ever brought up, but i have a question. I just recently purchased this.. and the batch process creates a greyscale image for the normal map upon batching... it looks like crap and doesnt function like a normal map should. What the hell? Wheres the good ol red green blue normal maps in batched form? Tell me that im just doing something wrong, PLEASE!

Think i found the problem though hopefully theres an easier way around this. When unity asks you to fix a normal map... it basically screws it up for your batcher as well and makes them grey. You need to set the normal maps to a regular color texture settings... even though unity wont like that. At least until your done batching.

 

Hi,
kurylo3d:
When you import the bump maps in your project, do not "fix" them to normal maps.
Instead, combine the assets first, and "fix" the resulting atlas.
If you need more help - have some suggestions, let me know.

I have read some reviews regarding batching tools on the asset store that describe the tool as limited.
I respect the reviewers opinions and I am glad they took the trouble to review my product.
I wish to kindly ask those who have purchased this product and those who consider buying it to read a little about batching implementation in unity and, perhaps, try to create some batched assets on they own. This way it will become evident that there are some requirements regarding assets creation, ie you have to build your assets in a specific way in order to be "batchable". These "limiting" requirements are not imposed by batching tools, are imposed by batching implementation in unity (and to my limited knowledge in any game engine). To me, if someone describes uv overlap as a limitation of this tool simply demonstrates that there is lack of information regarding batching. If you have other opinion, I 'll be happy to discuss it here or via email or skype.

I also wish to point that including a new shader requires re-writing the shader and the source of batching tools, which is a complex and time consuming work. I consider ~25$ per shader is a "more than fair" price, but, again, this is how I see it. I include the source of the batching tools and the shaders in the project so it is possible for those who wish to create them themselves. I am curious about the cost this process has in time.

Kind regards,
-Ipookratis

 

Honestly i dont use your tool for shaders or anything. I have been batching things on my own with taking models here on the asset store and to get better performance tossing them onto 1 texture map with all their textures. And moving the uvs by hand. Your tool saves some time when i got a lot of objects like that. I then export it back into maya and seperate it so i can place them around and use unity static batching since there all on the same texture map.

Not really a fan of the way your tool works. I dont use your tool the way it was intended, but none the less it saves me time. Why again do you need custom shaders? Seems odd to me. Plus all the extra gameobjects and sub gameobjects... and scripts on those objects... it just adds a lot of unecessary clutter to my scene to make things a pain in the ass to find and organize.

Oh and so far I dont have any overlapping uvs, but what would be the problem with that? Sometimes i might want to reuse part of the texture on seperate parts of the mode. Are you telling me that this would pose a problem? It shouldnt normally. I mean if i create my own atlas and just move uvs where i want em, i wouldnt get any issues.

 

Hi kurylo3d,

"Honestly i dont use your tool for shaders or anything. I have been batching things on my own with taking models here on the asset store and to get better performance tossing them onto 1 texture map with all their textures. And moving the uvs by hand. Your tool saves some time when i got a lot of objects like that. I then export it back into maya and seperate it so i can place them around and use unity static batching since there all on the same texture map."

The second part of my post ( "I have read some reviews..." and on ) was not a response to your post. Was a response to some reviews I have read on the asset store, regarding batching tools. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Of course you are welcome to use the tool as you wish, thanks for sharing your methodology (as stated before, I respect people who took the time to write these reviews, I just have expressed my opinion regarding the source of the limitations being the batching process and not batching tools, something that is evident after reading some info regarding batching).

"Not really a fan of the way your tool works. I dont use your tool the way it was intended, but none the less it saves me time."
...
"Plus all the extra gameobjects and sub gameobjects... and scripts on those objects... it just adds a lot of unecessary clutter to my scene".

I would appreciate any suggestions regarding batching tools workflow. I am glad you are finding it useful.

"Why again do you need custom shaders?"
To encode the color properties on i.e. desktop diffuse shaders. Imagine you have three diffuse shaders with different textures and different colors. If you need to batch them, you have to encode somehow the color properties ( I use vertex colors ) and modify the source of the shaders to decode the info. Depending on the shaders, other approaches are used as well to encode other properties than textures.

"Oh and so far I dont have any overlapping uvs, but what would be the problem with that"
You just made me realize that this thread is getting long
It was answered before, but it is a good question.

As described in http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/LightmappingUV.html:
"If you prefer to provide your own UVs for lightmapping, remember that a good UV set for lightmapping:

• Is contained within the [0,1]x[0,1] space
• Has no overlapping faces.
• Has low angle distortion, that is deviation of angles in UVs and in source geometry.
• Has low area distortion, that is, relative scale of triangles is mostly preserved, unless you really want some areas to have bigger Lightmap Resolution.
• Has enough margin between individual patches."

Lightmapping in unity uses texture atlases, hence the above recommendations. Uvs for texture atlases should be built with these requirements in mind. I will try to elaborate on "why" (what is the purpose of these recommendations) more, in a weekend post.

Another thing : I appreciate discussion. I do not know everything about batching, I do have many more things to learn and most of the things I know come from discussions with other people. I enjoy such conversations and I would really like to post more about this in weekend.
If only day had more hours

Kind regards,
-Ippokratis

 

well if your open to suggestions.

It would be great to have a tool that takes a bunch of seperate models... atlases the uvs and the textures and puts them on the same material.

-this would not combine them into a single mesh unless an option is set to do so. The reason is simply for static batching purposes.. Creating many meshes that can be part of the same texture map and same material.

-for instance on my personal projects i venture off into the asset store and buy models and artwork. Problem is none of it is useable to me. Most of it is just unoptimized. In either case i would try to combine a room full of furniture into a single 2048 map to reduce draw calls and take advantage of static batching.

Would be cool if i had a way to just automatically export them as seperate models and be done with it. Right now your work flow still has me doing some work in maya to import your combined mesh of everything.. seperate it... fix the normals (because they screw up when you unlock them from an imported model)...

Would be just great to select all the models... and then have it create a directory in my project models folder... with its own materials folder.. and own textures folder... and every single mesh seperate now but with the same material applied to it.

In fact... if you want to go even further... i still have to set up lods... would be great to take many LOD objects... and recreate all the lods below them on that atlas... and make them all batchable... with the same material...

Right now i gotta do it all by hand.

The key for me is neatness in my scenes... the more gameobjects u have the more clutter. Id rather have it create a folder in my project wit hthe meshes, materials, textures and lod prefabs automatically set up.

And I personally hate the custom materials thing. I understand what your doing, but i dont rely on color anyway. I would rather be able to batch any kind of material... custom ones as well.

 

Hi Ippokratis

Did you have time to check my problem? Did you receive my fbx file?

Thanks for your help
dondon

 

+1

 

Hi,
kurylo3d, nuverian : Thanks for the suggestions, I 'll take them into consideration for the next version of batching tools.
dondon : I have not received the fbx, would you mind to send it again at ippobour at gmail dot com and notify me via pm here ( I have deleted the spam folder, my guess is that it was misplaced there by gmail).

Update : I am currently working on adding Toon shader compatibility to batching tools.
Kind regards,
-Ippokratis

 

Hi Ippokratis. I've been trying to use your tools on some of my prefabs, but ran into a limitation that's tough for me: Batching Tools vomits when there are mesh filters without renderers in my batching hierarchy. I use these for colliders (for example, two box colliders on an L-shaped object). Can't Batching Tools just ignore these?

 

Hi Marble,
You could create a copy of the batching hiererarchy, remove the gameobjects that contain mesh filters without mesh renderers, batch the hierarchy. Then drag and drop the gameobjects that contain mesh filters without mesh renderers from the copy to the original.
If you have too many instances to do this manually, you have the source that allows you to suit batching tools to your project's needs.
Let me know if I can further assist you,
-Ippokratis

 

Hey Ippokratis, do you have plans to update Batching Tools to Unity 4.x?

Thank you!

-Steve

 

Hi Steve,
I plan to release a Unity 4 compatible version after Unity 4 comes out ( now we have beta ), otherwise I 'll have to make new versions for each beta iteration. Currently I focus in making a Toon shader compatible version of batching tools.
Kind regards,
-Ippokratis

 

Sounds great!

The only reason I ask was in response to a post I have in the Developer Preview section regarding the future of many plugins now that we're migrating to Unity 4.x. Since you're fairly active on the forum, I had a good chance of gaining some insight as to how this may all pan out.

Thanks for your time Ippokratis!

-Steve

 

HI! Ippokratis.
I wanna use BTDynamic on my skinned monster.
but
i cant find a 'combine objects botton' anywhere.

where is it?

 

Hi,
You cannot use BTDynamic on skinned characters, only on non-skinned ones ( with or without animations).
Kind regards,
-Ippokratis

 

Will this combine materials with different main colors or do all the combined textures have to have the same main color?

 

Hi,
No, this is not necessary. You can e.g combine different materials that use diffuse shader with many different colors.

 

@Ippokratis

Is it possible to increase the 4096 texture atlas size?

I found when combining textures for lots of objects it only works well if you make all the textures the same size. If you have different sizes like some 1024 and some 512 in the same atlas some textures can get altered in an undesirable way even at high atlas resolution. Is this a requirement of the tool?

When I select combine textures on a group of static objects the tool automatically combines the meshes as a 2nd step which means occlusion culling works but only if the entire group of meshes are not in view of the camera. How do I use the tool to only create a texture atlas so static objects use the same material but still have seperate meshes instead of combined mesh?

In your video after using batching tools the number of draw calls reduces and the batched value increases for the number of objects. When I use the tool my draw calls reduce but the batched value does not increase. I only get static batching for objects which are using Unity Pro static batching. Is this because of the meshes being combined?

If I set the batch method in the new prefab to Unity Batching the models disappear so I can only use BTStatic method to bake with?

Which gives the best performance, less draw calls, static batching or occlusion culling?

Having dynamic batching only for models with 300 or less vertices isn’t going to be that useful but I guess this is a limitation of Unity not the tool?

 

Hi,
Welcome

This is the max size unity supports. Besides, in realtime graphics, bigger sizes are not used routinely.
http://forums.3dtotal.com/showthread.php?t=107854

It is not, please send a minimum scene that reproduces this behavior so I can inspect it.

It is very simple actually.
After you select combine textures on a group of static objects, the tool produces a new object that is called by default level part 1. You select it and in the inspector you see it has a component attached, called Combined Objects(Script).
You select Unity Batching in the pop up menu called Batching Method and press Bake.
That's it.
To maximize your understanding, have a closer look at the manual, is very short and contains this info.

1.Remember to apply Bake
2.Close the stats window and reopen it. There is a bug since 3.5 in the Stats window that unity is aware of, regarding real time display of draw calls in this window is not automatically updated.

This is not intended behavior, please send a minimum scene that reproduces this behavior so I can inspect it.

Profile to find out. Depends on many factors, but you can go for all of them (and it would be a good idea to do so).

Exactly. It is a limitation that makes sense though.

Kind regards,
-Ippokratis

 

Nice tool, I was able to combine the materials for 2 simple objects within seconds, reduce draw calls and got about 15% increased FPS in <5 mins work.

I'm now moving on to 2 more complex objects and I'm a bit stuck, first as they are within my game I get
"Not enough (more than one) MeshFilter components found!"

So I add a MeshFilter to them, which then gives me
"No Mesh Renderer found"

That is true, they have a Skinned Mesh Renderer attached to them. These objects are imported .FBX files. They're displaying just fine too.

Any advice on where to go next ? Is there a specific import settings I should use. I tried adding a Mesh Renderer but found the Mesh Filter seemed to be 90 degrees off from the model.

Thanks,
Scott

 

Hi Scott,
You cannot use Batching Tools to combine skinned meshes = gameobjects that use the Skinned Mesh Renderer component.
Have a look at the manual and the videos in the first posts of this thread, they will help you understand better what you can do with this tool.
If you need more help, let me know,
Ippokratis

 

Hi,
I have converted most of the code in C#, I plan to add a dll option. The planned new release is due November's first week.
Thanks for the support,
-Ippokratis

 

Ippokratis, please try to give unique names to your scripts and functions in order to avoid errors about duplicated scripts. Generic names as "MeshExporter" and "CombineMesh" are used by several developers in Asset Store in their scripts. And there are a lot of customers with different tools from the Store installed in their projects, so compatibility issues ot that type are common.
Thanks.

 

Hi,
The "correct" way to solve it is via namespaces. The migration to C# comes to tackle some issues (maintenance-expandability-features) and this is one of them.Thanks for letting me know about this,
Kind regards,
-Ippokratis

 

Hi Ippokratis!

I'd like to know if you fixed the issue dondon had, because I have the same problem when expanding meshes on objects with multiple materials whether they have tangents or not.
Thanks a lot for this really useful tool!

 

Hi,
Yes, it is solved.
If you need the fix now, please send an email at ippobour at gmail com and provide me your purchase invoice number.
I will then send back the fixed file to you.
Otherwise, the fix will be included in the next update.

 

Hi,
CheckbooM : I have confirmed that you are a valid customer but I cannot send you the file at the email address you provided.
I get this message :
Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 582 582 The file attached violates our email policy (state 17).
Please supply another email address.
Kind regards,
-Ippokratis

 

Will the latest version run in Unity4 beta ?

 

Griffo :
No, I do not provide support for beta.
I am working in Unity 4 compatibility but I do not intend to enter the "hunt the beta" game.
When Unity 4 gets released, I will provide a version that supports it.
Kind regards,
-Ippokratis

 

Ok, Thanks.

 

Hi Ippokratis,

I've tried your product against some models but I'm having the same problem as dondon stated in page 13 :

IndexOutOfRangeException: Array index is out of range.
BTHelper.ExpandSubmeshes () (at Assets/BatchingTools/Editor/Plugins/BTHelper.js:157)

Briefly, when I try to expand submeshes the console throws these errors

Mesh.tangents is out of bounds. The supplied array needs to be the same size as the Mesh.vertices array.
UnityEngine.Mesh:set_tangents(Vector4[])
BTHelper:CopyMesh(Mesh) (at Assets/BatchingTools/Editor/Plugins/BTHelper.js:395)
BTHelper:ExpandSubmeshes() (at Assets/BatchingTools/Editor/Plugins/BTHelper.js:116)
BatchingTools:OnGUI() (at Assets/BatchingTools/Editor/BatchingTools.js:909)
UnityEditor.HostView:OnGUI()

and

IndexOutOfRangeException: Array index is out of range.
BTHelper.ExpandSubmeshes () (at Assets/BatchingTools/Editor/Plugins/BTHelper.js:157)
BatchingTools.OnGUI () (at Assets/BatchingTools/Editor/BatchingTools.js:909)
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
Rethrow as TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
System.Reflection.MethodBase.Invoke (System.Object obj, System.Object[] parameters)
UnityEditor.HostView.Invoke (System.String methodName, System.Object obj)
UnityEditor.HostView.Invoke (System.String methodName)
UnityEditor.HostView.OnGUI ()


I've not seen in the previous post a working solution for this problem but I may have missed it. Any chanche to let me understand what's wrong ? May I send you the models to check against ?

Thanks !

 

aspide :
Thanks for providing the info requested, I 've sent the fix to your email adress.
Let me know if you need more help.
Kind regards,
-Ippokratis

 

Hi I'm not a graphics guy so excuse me if I ask anything stupid or obvious (I'm a game-play programmer pathfinding, min-max etc-etc...). All the models that i work with are imported from fbx files. Currently I'm getting zero batching and around 1500 - 3000 draw calls for each scene, I understand the concept of batching vs draw-calls but what are the prerequisites to get unity batching to work...

 

cobaltBlue :
There are two basic kind of meshes : Simple meshes and Skinned meshes.
( Simple meshes = Meshes that are not rigged ).
Simple meshes can be still or they can move around.
To use unity batching, the meshes you are using must all use the same material.
If they move, you use dynamic batching. It has some limitations, you can find them in the optimization section.
If they do not move, you use static batching. It is available for Pro only.
If you choose to use unity batching, batching tools can help you create a single material out of many materials.
If you need more info, feel free to ask.

 

Looks like a great tool. However, my game will make fairly heavy use of the reflective/specular shader, which Batching Tools doesn't support, which is one of the only reasons I haven't purchased it yet.

Oh, and is it possible to use during runtime?

 

cdmpants :
Thanks for your kind words.
If you are using different parameters for each shader, e.g. different specular color, it is not possible to create one common material.
If you keep the shader parameters the same though, for groups of meshes with different textures, it is possible to create a common shader per group.
Also, if you are interested, we could work on your project, to achieve better rendering times. You can contact me via pm.

 

Hi Ippo I've done some reading and got batching to work in my scenes (it was a really dumb mistake on my part) took a look at batching tools looks cool but one question batching tools literally churns out a new single mesh for whatever meshes u choose to be batched together but doesn't that run counter to occlusion culling since if its one huge mesh like a terrain the combined mesh won't be occluded since some part of the mesh is always in front of the camera..

Edit: How many verts does btdynamic support currently and what restrictions does it have?

 

Just updated to Unity 4 and I am getting this error:

This is an urgent warning because I can't play my project with this error going off.

Thanks

 

cobaltBlue : This is the reason I suggest batching groups of nearby objects. Occlusion culling is relevant in some games genres.
Please have a read at the manual in the first post, it is concise and will solve many questions. In short, btdynamic supports as many verts a skinned mesh does (64000 if I recall correctly). It is not a good idea to use so many verts though, since it has a cost too.

jrDev : I am aware of the issue and i am working on an update. I expect it to be finished soon ( ~ 1 - 2 weeks ).

 

Oh cmon Ippo, 1-2 weeks?!!! :-/

I thought with the beta out for a while now, everyone would have been prepared...

 

The error:

Assets/BatchingTools/Plugins/BTHelper.js(745,65): BCE0019: 'TryFastReimportFromMetaData' is not a member of 'UnityEditor.ImportAssetOptions'

is there from the first beta. I also thought you had the update already prepared...

 

jrDev : I really try to fix the issue. I use heavily the GameObject.active which is now obsolete, so I have to change code on many places.
angel_m : I started working on an update before the beta was out. I have not stated that the update is ready. The error code you mention is "the tip of the iceberg", there are many changes that must take place besides that I am afraid. Most of the work I have done so far involved changing the code base from js to C#, not resolving the new API changes.

Those who wish to use it now should create a project in 3.6, perform the mesh combine operations, bake the results and upgrade the project in 4. It is an ugly workaround until I finish the update.


I try to maintain this package in parallel with my day job and a recently started freelance contract, which needs to be finished by end of December. The development of the update is slow and it is the second time I have to rewrite the entire package due to changed in Unity API ( first time was in unity 3.5 last year ). I respect people who have paid for this asset and those who bought it after it was cracked. The thing is, I get few sales since it was cracked thus I choose to work more on other projects that bring me more money.

That practically means that the update will take more time to appear.
It will appear eventually and I will keep maintaining this project regardless how many people crack it.

Kind regards,
-Ippokratis

edit 24/11/12 : The new way unity treats gameobjects means that the assembly part does not work. I will try to fix the rest of the package.

 

replace the whole line with the following: AssetDatabase.ImportAsset(path + ".png",ImportAssetOptions.Default);

And it all works fine again for 4.0+ atleast for me

 

Ippokratis,

Any chance of an update on Unity 4 compatibility proper?

Are we getting close to an updated version or are you able to give a projected time frame for a release?

The fix from BryceK above is sufficient for me to be able to compile my projects however I would like proper confirmation from you if in the interim this is sufficient or are there other parts of the plugin likely to encounter issues because of the change in Unity API?

Cheers

 

Hi,
I find it very difficult to restore the assembly option. This means that the next version of batching tools will not be able to replace the game objects you choose with their combined replacements. Users will have to pick the meshes and texture atlases from the batching tools prefab folder and compose them by themselves.
I will release the new version next Monday.

 

I have restored full batching tools functionality.
Also fixed a nasty parts naming bug.
I will commit now the new version to the asset store.
All feedback is welcome.

Warning : New version is not backwards compatible, so if you use 3.5 or lower, do not upgrade.

 

Will I be able to get the previous version?

 

Hi,
The 1.45 version is available at the Asset Store until 1.5 version gets approved ( it will take some days to get approved I guess ).

 

Okay, I'm still on 3.5 so I updated to 1.45. Just wasn't sure if the Asset Store allows access to previous versions in case I missed it before the update.

Btw, noticed you've taken some negative reviews on the asset store lately so I put a positive one up. I think it's a great tool. Not sure why people are saying you're being deceiving :???: