Piotr Krynski's Efficient Environment Design for Blender #7 Scene optimisation

 Keeping it smooth

This

Holy crap! What an example!

10GB scene. Already packed. 4000 files!

1. Unpack the scene so that all its file assets are saved into a scene-specific folder.

2. Run the To Optimise Tools. Change PNGs to JPGS and reduce file sizes.

3. Use the 3D scene checker to see which meshes are too dense for your scene's needs. Limited Dissolve Modifier.

During the lesson, I keep getting reminders of how useful HardOps is. That might be the next course to complete.

4. Check that you are using object duplication for maximum efficiency. However, instanced collections are where you save the most memory. Instanced collections are not editable.

... Decimation continues...

Piotr runs through and is shockingly destructive, and yet all the meshes that he decimates down into a ragged mess doesn't impact the scene's visual quality. This is an example of watching a master do work and making the effort look easy but in fact they are using excellent judgement that is hard to replicate.

Tweaks lighting

This was a hard lesson to learn from. It's Piotr adjusting his lighting setup to get what he wants out of the scene. Strong and clear reflections in the mud pools from a much stronger sunlight. That's the lesson, the rest is his rather brilliant artistic judgement.

Shrink Wrap

Deformed low-poly spheres to act as rocks.

Piotr says "I don't use scatter addons"

His flow:

1. Create some scatter objects, give them some basic low-resolution rock textures. Rotate them to sit flat on the ground.

2. Add a plane and subdivide a bunch of times. Add as a collection.

3. As a particle system: Render as a collection.

4. Toggle object rotation. If they end up rendered with the wrong orientation, select the source objects and rotate them as required. You can use the particle systems Advanced: Rotation settings too. Deselect Show Emitter in Render settings.

5. Add a shrinkwrap modifier. Select Wrap Method to Project. Select the particle system and shrink wrap around your ground plane. Move the Shrinkwrap modifier up the stack.

"Not a huge fan of scatter addons. This method is simple and effective. I hate doing weight painting... The seed changes so your placement is not as controlled in the render."

Piotr can copy(Alt+D) and paste the particle object, then move and scale it, achieving an effective and automatic fallout. 

I can see how Geoscatter can do a lot of the heavy lifting. Geonodes are now a lot more stable since Piotr first tested them as a scatter solution vs particles. However,  you can see that Piotr has a lot more exacting control over replicated shrink-wrapped particle systems.

I'm not sure I'd use this method, but there's no denying that his placement is excellent. The rocks look so much more natural than my efforts.

"I want the rocks to work with my composition, not take away from it" -- Don't overdo scatters so that you have too much visual noise."

"I don't want to overdesign things. Use cheats and shortcuts to get what you need out of modelling effort."

Next: Real-time compositing.

This may be another case of having a preference for an addon solution, but I should take the time to learn the manual approach. It's also possible that Blender offers improved compositor integration.