Question Concerning MCX-Drawcall Minimizer

[falcon409]

The model shown below was rendered and textured in Sketchup, converted to a dae (collada) file and imported into MCX for conversion to a bgl. This is a relatively simple model despite the physical size and certainly I have done others that were far more detailed. The problem I have run into is that when I run the drawcall minimizer it displays 121 drawcalls and that number doesn't change. The texture sheets are built but the drawcall number remains the same. I have never had a model with more than 30 and that number is always reduced to single digits after running the minimizer. I had 4 metal benches positioned on the front and back sides of the Terminal and I removed those which lowered the drawcall number to 109 but again it remained unchanged after running the minimizer.

Obviously with that number the model is unusable and I'm at a loss as to why the high number to begin with and why the minimizer has no effect.

Terminal-2019-aug-4-007 by Ed Wells, on Flickr

Terminal-2019-aug-4-008 by Ed Wells, on Flickr

Below is a link to download a zipfile which contains the working folder for the sketchup model and the collada file:
https://app.box.com/s/ujie52c5i7yx7dcqvi2yxa80oy52hzs2

Any help or suggestions will be very much appreciated!

 

[Pyscen]

Hello...

For which FS/P3D is this for? Very important. Before looking at the file in question, are any of the textures tileable? This could be one of the reasons why it's not minimizing and how do you have drawcall batching option set within MCX?

 

[falcon409]

Hello...

For which FS/P3D is this for? Very important. Before looking at the file in question, are any of the textures tileable? This could be one of the reasons why it's not minimizing and how do you have drawcall batching option set within MCX?

This is for FSX. . .basically most textures (walls and roof) are tiled (but going back to something I said previous. . .I have done others far more elaborate and all tiled and never had this many drawcalls). I assume you are talking about the "Exporter" section under the "Options" drop down menu. . .Batching is set to True. . .the other to False.

 

[falcon409]

Some additional testing:
I ran the Drawcall Monitor and that shows a drawcall of 9 despite MCX showing 109
I removed all the posts, the 4 benches and the metal bumper attached to the posts. I opened up the bottom of the building and removed all unnecessary walls and interior parts (not much there as it was). I loaded the stripped model into MCX and ran the drawcall Minimizer and that showed before and after drawcalls of 45. I compiled the model to a bgl and again opened the drawcall monitor and it displayed the same numbers it had when the original model showed 121 drawcalls (9 drawcalls).

So is the Monitor correct or is MCX displaying faulty information?

 

[Pyscen]

Hello...

This is just the terminal building pictured above correct? If so, I have noticed that some of the textures are not in the "power of 2". For just the Terminal, I'm only showing:

Maximum texture size: 2048 x 2048
17 textures 20 drawcalls (before) -
13 textures 15 drawcalls (after) -

So I'm not sure - how or where you are getting the numbers you gave.

What size are you making the maximum texture size, while minimizing?

Concerning tileable textures... if the maximum texture size is set to low or the tileable texture is too large, it will not be able to minimize it.

 

[falcon409]

Thanks Doug. This is the first scenery object I've done in a while and there have been many updates to MCX in that time. . .could it be that some settings have been changed in some way?

As for the numbers and texture size. . .for the Minimizer I set the max texture size at 4096x4096 which rendered 7 textures. . .two of which were 4096 and the rest smaller. With that setting the minimizer showed me 109 drawcalls. When I converted it to an mdl and opened it in the drawcall Monitor it showed that there were only 9 drawcalls.

I have done a huge number of sceneries. . .many with more complex buildings than this and I have never seen any of them with an initial drawcall of more than 30 and that number was "always" reduced considerably with the minimizer. This the first time I've ever seen such a large drawcall and especially one that remained constant even with the minimizer. I'm beginning to wonder about those settings more and more. I'm going to look into those and see if there's something amiss there.

Thanks

 

[falcon409]

Just to follow up, here are the drawcall numbers from my redo just a bit ago. This is the Terminal with all parts intact (benches, posts, bumpers, etc). I used the texture size you suggested (2048x2048) for the Drawcall Minimizer and you see the results. I also loaded the Compiled terminal.bgl into the Monitor and you see those numbers as well.

MCX_Drawcalls by Ed Wells, on Flickr

Monitor_Drawcalls by Ed Wells, on Flickr

 

[Pyscen]

Hello...

Remember, I have your original zip file. I'm getting the numbers, etc. that I have given above. If you made any changes to this specific model, then it would be hard for me to compare with.

Try this though, within the "Options" settings, under "Exporter settings", change "DrawcallBatching" to "False" and change the "DrawcallBatchingWorkingLOD" to "True".

Just a note: Even if you updated MCX to the current and copied over the old version, your settings shouldn't have changed unless you changed them prior to. The only time MCX's settings would change (back to Default) if you placed it in a new folder.

 

[falcon409]

At this point Doug I am content that I have a working model, despite the erroneous information displayed by the MCX Drawcall Minimizer. The Drawcall Monitor shows numbers that are more in line with what I would have expected to see in MCX, so I'm going to move on to the other buildings for this airport. I thank you for the time you've spent working through this. . .it has been very much appreciated.

 

[arno]

Hi,

Could it be that you changed some of the optimization settings (like collapse models parts) in MCX? I think that might influence the results reported by the drawcall minimizer. It's best to have all these optimize settings on true.