How many tris/verts is "too many" for a terrain?

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Hey all, simple and quick question here.

I made a terrain in blender, exported it as a .obj mesh, then used a script I found online (Object2Terrain) to convert the blender mesh to a unity terrain for painting, etc.

I noticed a HUGE fps drop and suspect the terrain is of extremely high poly but want to make sure with you guys that that is my error before I remake/repaint the entire terrain.

Currently my verts and tri's are between 500,000 and 3 million, and it changes a lot as I look around at the terrain.

I'm assuming this is too high?

Also, does anyone know of a good way to make a low poly unity terrain mesh from a blender mesh? Otherwise should I just paint the terrain in blender and bake it on / use a blender mesh as my terrain?

Thanks! Nick

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Answer by DroidifyDevs · Apr 02, 2016 at 02:01 AM

That is pretty high, however usually the FPS drops because of too much real-time lighting and shadows. You should seriously start baking your shadows at that point as it will HUGELY help your scene. Once I made a test project, had 1.5 million tris but because I had baked the lighting the FPS was 35 on my Samsung Tab 3 (crappy tablet). Before light baking if couldn't get over 5FPS. Proper mixing of baked and real-time light is essential. So if you can lower the poly count, but the shadow calls take MUCH more computing power.

^^ Personal experience, learned the hard way.

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nickostan · Apr 02, 2016 at 03:22 PM 0

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Thanks, my lighting is baked, but I think it's my terrain that's the issue. I'll accept this answer :)

MagicStyle · Nov 10, 2017 at 01:52 PM 0

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But if we bake the shadows then they arent dynamic anymore?!

How many tris/verts is "too many" for a terrain?

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