Finally, let's cover mesh and animation files. These file types are essentially large arrays of vertex and skinned bone data, and there are a variety of techniques we can apply to minimize file size, while keeping a similar, if not identical, appearance. There are also ways to lower the cost of rendering large groups of these objects through batching techniques. Let's take a look at a series of performance-enhancing techniques we can apply to such files.
This is the most obvious way to gain performance and should always be considered. In fact, since we cannot batch objects using Skinned Mesh Renderers, it's one of the good ways of reducing CPU and GPU runtime overhead for animated objects.
Reducing the polygon count is simple, straightforward, and provides both CPU and memory cost savings for the time required for artists to clean up the mesh. Much of an object's detail is provided almost entirely by detailed texturing and complex shading in this...