Mobile Optimization
Art budgets for phones and tablets
Also known as: Mobile game art · Mobile optimization · Mobile textures ASTC · Mobile draw calls · Mobile shaders · Android iOS optimization
Definition
Mobile optimization is making game art run well on phones and tablets, which have less memory, less power and often heat limits. The main rules are to keep textures small and compressed with ASTC, use few materials and draw calls, keep triangle counts moderate, bake lighting where possible, and avoid transparency, large particles and heavy post-processing, which use up the limited fill rate. Simple, stylized art with baked lighting suits mobile hardware very well.
In production
Set budgets early for triangles, textures and draw calls per scene, and test on the oldest device you plan to support, as results on a new phone hide problems. Share materials with texture atlases, use vertex color for variation, and limit dynamic lights and shadows. Watch the memory, since mobile devices close apps that exceed it, and keep the build size small with compression.
Tools that use Mobile Optimization
See also
ASTC
Mobile-era GPU texture compression
Draw Call
GPU rendering command
Fill Rate
How many pixels the GPU can shade per second
Texture Atlas
Multiple assets, one texture
Static Batching
Combine non-moving meshes to cut draw calls
Baked vs Realtime Lighting
Precomputed or calculated every frame
Texture Memory Budget
How much memory textures use