Vertex Color Casting

In the field of 3D graphics and game development, every performance gain is important. For distant Level of Detail meshes (LODs), texture sampling for color representation can often be excessive. A more efficient alternative is using vertex colors instead of traditional texture sampling, particularly for models rendered at a distance where fewer color pixels are sufficient. This method is resource-efficient and can improve rendering performance.

Simplygon’s Vertex Color Caster offers a practical solution. It allows you to bake material channels directly into a vertex color field efficiently. The SetColorSpaceEdgeThreshold setting lets you control whether color borders are hard or smooth. Hard edges increase vertex count but ensure sharp color demarcations, while smooth edges reduce vertex count but can result in less distinct color transitions.

Vertex-colored models can be rendered with simple, low-cost shaders in engines like Unity and Unreal Engine, as well as in custom engines. Vertex color casters are also capable of baking other types of data, such as material information into a remeshed physics mesh, as exemplified in baking material information into remeshed physics meshes.

By integrating vertex color casters with other Simplygon features, you can achieve the following optimizations:

• Reduce draw calls and texture sampling by baking materials to vertex colors at the final stage of a LOD chain, using Triangle Reducer.
• Save texture space and minimize texture sampling by baking mask maps (like metallic, specular, or roughness) into vertex colors for distant HLODs with Remesher techniques.

To discover how vertex color casters can meet your specific needs, contact us for an evaluation.