The State of Simplygon in 2024

Simplygon is the standard tool for automated 3D content optimization. It reduces artist costs, eliminates tedious work, and renders more content per frame. Simplygon has been used in over 600 AAA games worldwide. Among the latest titles are Starfield, Diablo IV, and Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Today we'll cover some news from Simplygon 10.3 and where it fits into game production. We are going to focus on Simplygon's Unity and Unreal Engine plugins, but it is not limited to those two. Simplygon is an SDK that can be integrated into game engines, DCC tools, or content pipelines.

Why Automated Asset Optimization?

Automated asset optimization automates tasks like generating level of detail (LOD) meshes, optimizing models for weaker target platforms, and creating hierarchical level of detail (HLOD) models for open-world games.

When considering automated asset optimization, it is common to focus solely on reducing manual labour done by artists. While this can save a lot of time, even more value can be gained by taking a step back and looking at the entire game pipeline.

Consider the following questions:

• What happens if we need to optimize our content even more just before shipping to achieve our target frame rate?
• Rather than pushing most of the optimization work towards the end of production, wouldn't it be better to do it continuously? This way, we would have a good idea of the memory and performance budgets all the time.
• What if the game is super-successful and we decide to move the game to more platforms?
• Wouldn't it be better to review the optimized content on the target platform, in-game, rather than spending cycles before it goes in?

The answer to all of these questions is that we want a stable content pipeline whereas much of the optimization is done in an automated fashion. This is the way to unlock Simplygon's true potential.

Simplygon in Unreal Engine 5

Simplygon comes with a mature plugin for Unreal Engine. Using it, you can automate building levels of detail, create cheap stand-in meshes, and build HLODs.

One of the focus areas of Simplygon 10.3 was adding a custom HLOD builder for world partition levels. At GDC 2024, we delved into more details on this topic.

If you are interested in trying this for your own game, read a step-by-step guide in Simplygon's blog post How to Build HLOD Clusters for World Partition Levels with Simplygon.

Simplygon in Unity

The other focus area for Simplygon 10.3 was an overhauled Unity plugin. We’ve eliminated the need for USD as an intermediate format. This major rewrite has resolved numerous known issues, resulting in a more consistent and stable plugin. Let's have a look at how to use Simplygon's triangle reducer from within Unity.

It is not just the triangle count that can be the source of performance problems. There are many potential bottlenecks in Unity games, and Simplygon comes with automated tools to address them as well. For an overview of more tools that can be used, read Optimizing Unity Games with Simplygon 10.3.

And More

Automated asset optimization is a huge topic, and there are many more areas left to explore.

If you are interested in how to integrate Simplygon into your game production, contact us and we will help you.