Game-Ready Assets is a content collection made for game developers. Content comprises source FBX and texture files. Game-ready has no clear definition. But across the industry, it usually means being very aware of the performance impact of polygons and textures and use them as efficiently as possible.
A Game Ready Asset is a common term used for models that have been optimized for real-time rendering in games. The minimum requirement for an asset ready for play is that its poly count is sufficiently reduced that it makes efficiency in game engines. However, the reduced poly count doesn’t mean it is a quality model. There are other features a game-ready model may have, and these include the following.
A game-ready asset is usually a pretty low poly mesh that doesn’t waste triangles and can deform/perform well. Usually, textures are baked from a high poly source, with the final materials built-in which game engine you use to display it.
-Mark Dygert 2019-
Low Poly
The poly count of a 3d model must be decreased to a tolerable level for a game engine to render it efficiently. This could imply decreasing a model’s poly count from millions to thousands.
This is known as retopology, and it is usually an additional step that a 3d modeler must complete to make the model Game Ready.
Replotting each poly is one of the most frequent ways to do this, and it can be a lengthy procedure. There are automatic possibilities, but this procedure frequently requires manual intervention, which can be time-consuming. One of the main reasons why game-ready models are so popular is because of this.
Normal Map
When you reduce the poly count of a 3D model, you sometimes lose a lot of the model’s detail. Normal Maps assist in decreasing this loss by simulating the fine detail of the 3D object.
A Normal Map is a texture map that, when applied to a 3D model, helps to manipulate how light interacts with the model. This simulates the loss of fine detail caused by decreasing a model’s poly count.
This map needs two versions of the same model: a high poly version and a low poly version. Baking is a procedure that employs the high poly version of the model with more fine detail to project onto the low poly.
Minimised Texture Resolutions
While it is important to minimize poly count, it sometimes reduces texture resolution size is ignored. The increase in disk space required from one texture resolution to another might be compounding.
Good UV’s
A UV is the two-dimensional representation of a model to which your texture map is applied. UVs can be generated in a variety of ways, both automatically and manually.
To construct a UV, you should first make seams in your model. These seams specify how to unwrap the model to display it on a 2D picture. The location of these seams can frequently cause inconsistencies in your texturing.
These inconsistencies may not matter for a model that will only be rendered as an image because they can be hidden. These can be important for gaming models because a player may see the model in its entirety.
Excellent game assets Place these seams in places they are unlikely to be detected, for example, around sharp edges where the disparity may be undetectable.
The second thing to consider with a UV is that the model takes up as little space as feasible. Incorrect usage of the space may require the model to increase its texture resolution to counter the lack of space for detail.
Levels of Detail
Truly incredible game-ready models allow you to incorporate what is known as Levels of Detail (LOD), which is where you can swap out the model and its textures dependent on how far away the model is from the game camera.
It saves resources since you may use a low poly model and texture resolution when the model is far away from the camera and a higher poly model and texture resolution when the model is close to the camera.
So, how can a game-ready model incorporate LOD? You can use LOD if the model has different texture resolutions or different versions with different polycounts.
Creating variants of a model can be time-consuming because it entails modifying the object’s geometry to create its versions. As a result, unless you produce these models yourself, finding models with LOD in any model store can be challenging.
Reference source: CG Obsession || Polycount || Steam
