Unity UI Performance tips - Sharing my findings

Limit the usage of 'Best Fit' and 'Rich Text' in Text components

Don't use dyanmic, use bitmap/static fonts if possible

Limit the usage of Outline/Shadow components on Text game objects. Bake the effect in the bitmap font instead

Stick to 'simple' sprites if possible. Avoid large 'tiled' sprites

Flatten out the transform hierarchy. The more nesting the more transform calculations needed to position children correctly

Uncheck "Pixel Perfect" in the Canvas settings. Big performance hitter.

Screen Space Overlay UI is slightly faster than Screen Space Camera. In Overlay the UI is drawn on top of the screen immediately avoiding all the culling and sorting that Camera space has to go through. (The performance hit shouldn't be that critical, and Screen Space Camera is convenient though, so maybe go with Camera and see if it causes you issues down the line)

Avoid stacking UI images/text on top of each other to best of your ability. This causes more overdraw and will slow things down

Subdivide your UI to multiple canvases based on what's static vs dynamically moving. Changing the position/rotation/scale/sprite/text of a UI element in a canvas causes a rebuild of the canvas' mesh for all its children. So having a single Canvas for the entire UI of your game is not a great idea. Divide it into logical groups that update/change together. e.g. Maybe each menu/screen/subscreen/popup has its own Canvas, maybe the hud top has a canvas vs the hud's bottom, etc.

General tip: Avoid Camera.main calls as it does Object.FindObjectWithTag every time it's accessed! Have a direct reference to the camera you're using instead.

Prefer enabling/disabling the canvas itself instead of the entire gameobject. Avoiding OnEnable/OnDisable callbacks on the entire hierarchy which could be expensive.

Avoid LayoutGroups. Roll out your own (see linked video for more details)

Updated pooled objects properties first before enabling it when borrowing an object from the pool. This avoids unnecessary dirtying of the object's hierarchy

With ScrollRects with many items, attach a Canvas (with no Pixel Perfect) to the scroll rect so that scrolling the items won't dirty out the elements in the outer canvases

Pool the items in the view. enable/disable elements as they get in/out of view

Clamp the velocity of the scrollview so that you don't end up with very small deltas making very small changes to your elements without it being apprently changing on screen

Turn off Raycast Target for static or non-interactive elements. This reduces the number of UI objects the collision/click/input raycast checker has to go through to determine what UI elements should receive events

Take out GraphicsRaycaster components from Canvases that don't require input events

Pack your sprites together to reduce drawcalls. Use Texture Packer or Unity's atlas/packer systems

https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-ui-performance-tips-sharing-my-findings.524916/

#ui #performance #optimization #tips

Unity - Scripting API: Graphics.DrawMeshInstancedIndirect

Difference between Graphics.DrawMeshInstancedIndirect and Graphics.DrawMeshInstanced with examples

https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Graphics.DrawMeshInstancedIndirect.html

#gpu #instancing

Chapter 2. Animated Crowd Rendering | NVIDIA Developer

https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/gpugems3/part-i-geometry/chapter-2-animated-crowd-rendering

#gpu #animation #instancing

Rider 2020.2 Roadmap - .NET Tools Blog.NET Tools Blog

https://blog.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2020/05/29/rider-2020-2-roadmap/

#rider #roadmap

GPU Spline Deformation in Unity - Roy Theunissen

https://medium.com/@roy.theunissen/gpu-spline-deformation-in-unity-a710f55f210c

Repo: https://github.com/RoyTheunissen/GPU-Spline-Deformation

#mesh #spline #deformation #bezier

ArtStation - Tileable Liquid Mesh on Spline, Simon Trümpler

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/BmN5G6

#liquid #mesh #vfx

Arm Guide for Unity Developers Optimizing Mobile Gaming Graphics Version 4.2 – Arm Developer

https://developer.arm.com/docs/100140/0402

#arm #mali #guide #gpu #graphics

Unity – Arm Developer

Arm guides for Unity

https://developer.arm.com/solutions/graphics-and-gaming/gaming-engine/unity

#arm #guides #unity

GitHub - yasirkula/UnitySimplePatchTool: Unity port of SimplePatchTool library to add patching support to standalone Unity applications

https://github.com/yasirkula/UnitySimplePatchTool

#patch #tool

Laigter: normal map generator! - Lets Build Community 👩‍💻👨‍💻

https://letsbuild.gg/azagaya/laigter-normal-map-generator-2k12

#sprite #normal #map #generator

GitHub - Unity-Technologies/Unity-Simulation-Smart-Camera-Outdoor: Unity Simulation Sample project for outdoor smart camera usecase

https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/Unity-Simulation-Smart-Camera-Outdoor

#smart #camera #city #simulation

Speed up mobile iteration with the new Device Simulator - Unity Technologies Blog

Unity 2019.3

https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/09/27/speed-up-mobile-iteration-with-the-new-device-simulator/

#device #simulator

GitHub - MaxSigma/UnityExperiments: Collection of experimental Unity Projects

Interesting effects and features, e.g. marching cubes and Displacement Shader

https://github.com/MaxSigma/UnityExperiments

#shader #vfx #collection

Android Mobile Notifications With Unity | raywenderlich.com

https://www.raywenderlich.com/4735664-android-mobile-notifications-with-unity

#notifications

Integrating Native C/C++ libraries with Unity as Plugins (A step by step guide)

https://medium.com/@paawilly17/integrating-native-c-c-libraries-with-unity-as-plugins-a-step-by-step-guide-17ad70c2e3b4

#dll #c #cpp #libs

Unity's evolving best practices

https://unity3d.com/how-to/unity-best-practices-for-engine-performance

#performance #optimization #tips

Thread Synchronization Performance

https://jacksondunstan.com/articles/5522

#thread #multi #parallel #performance #synchronization

How Anti Air makes use of the Unity - Combine Meshes functionality for optimization - IndieWatch

https://indiewatch.net/2020/06/04/how-anti-air-makes-use-of-the-unity-combine-meshes-functionality-for-optimization/

#mesh #combine

Ultimate 10+ Shaders | VFX Shaders | Unity Asset Store

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/ultimate-10-shaders-168611?aid=1011l8NVc&utm_source=aff

#shader #collection

Make clickable links in Unity TextMeshPro

https://medium.com/@immops/make-clickable-links-in-unity-textmeshpro-8b72b24a820f

#clickable #text #url