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@beicause beicause commented Nov 24, 2025

Objective

Resolves #21902.

Solution

This PR adopts a relatively transparent approach to reduce the GPU vertex buffer size. On CPU-side mesh can still use uncompressed Float32 data, and users are not required to insert compressed vertex formats. The vertex data is automatically processed into lower-precision/octahedral encoded data when uploading to the GPU.

To enable vertex attribute compression, just set the attribute_compression field of Mesh, or set mesh_attribute_compression of GltfLoaderSettings. If enabled, normal and tangent will be octahedral encoded Unorm16x2, uv0, uv1, joint weight and color will be corresponding Unorm16 or Float16. I also provide Unorm8x4 for vertex color if hdr isn't needed.

Testing

I tested with several 2d and 3d examples and it seems to work.

@JMS55 JMS55 self-requested a review November 24, 2025 03:20
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JMS55 commented Nov 24, 2025

This will need some thinking on how it interacts with Virtual Geometry and Solari, which rely on hardcoded vertex formats.

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For the octahedral normals and tangents, encoding as UNORM16 or SNORM16 should give better accuracy? Unless there's some compatibility or performance reason to prefer floats.

For joint weights, I'd similarly suggest UNORM16. Unless Bevy wants to support joints weights greater than one - I don't know of any engine that does this. For bonus points it should also adjusted the encoded weights to make sure they sum to one.

@greeble-dev greeble-dev added C-Feature A new feature, making something new possible A-Rendering Drawing game state to the screen C-Performance A change motivated by improving speed, memory usage or compile times S-Needs-Review Needs reviewer attention (from anyone!) to move forward labels Nov 24, 2025
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Your PR caused a change in the graphical output of an example or rendering test. This might be intentional, but it could also mean that something broke!
You can review it at https://pixel-eagle.com/project/B04F67C0-C054-4A6F-92EC-F599FEC2FD1D?filter=PR-21926

If it's expected, please add the M-Deliberate-Rendering-Change label.

If this change seems unrelated to your PR, you can consider updating your PR to target the latest main branch, either by rebasing or merging main into it.

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Your PR caused a change in the graphical output of an example or rendering test. This might be intentional, but it could also mean that something broke!
You can review it at https://pixel-eagle.com/project/B04F67C0-C054-4A6F-92EC-F599FEC2FD1D?filter=PR-21926

If it's expected, please add the M-Deliberate-Rendering-Change label.

If this change seems unrelated to your PR, you can consider updating your PR to target the latest main branch, either by rebasing or merging main into it.

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Your PR caused a change in the graphical output of an example or rendering test. This might be intentional, but it could also mean that something broke!
You can review it at https://pixel-eagle.com/project/B04F67C0-C054-4A6F-92EC-F599FEC2FD1D?filter=PR-21926

If it's expected, please add the M-Deliberate-Rendering-Change label.

If this change seems unrelated to your PR, you can consider updating your PR to target the latest main branch, either by rebasing or merging main into it.

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greeble-dev commented Nov 24, 2025

@beicause, I noticed that you also changed the UVs from FLOAT16 to UNORM16. That might be a problem for some assets since it's legitimate for UVs to be outside the [0, 1] range.

I'm not sure what the best option is for UVs, so maybe worth seeing if someone else has an opinion. From a glance it seems like Unreal supports FLOAT16/32. Godot does use UNORM16 but scales them to fit the maximum value if they're outside of [0, 1] (ref 1, ref 2).

@greeble-dev greeble-dev added the C-Dependencies A change to the crates that Bevy depends on label Nov 24, 2025
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Also, could the PR description say whether compression is enabled by default? The description currently sounds like it's disabled by default, but the code seems like it's enabled by default. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm guessing most people would prefer it to be disabled by default.

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I think using float16 for UVs is worthwhile because the benefits of unorm16 may be limited after thought.

I would probably like to enable compression by default, as other engines seem to do this by default as well. Enabling compression generally provides a net benefit, and users can opt-out if issues arise.

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Your PR caused a change in the graphical output of an example or rendering test. This might be intentional, but it could also mean that something broke!
You can review it at https://pixel-eagle.com/project/B04F67C0-C054-4A6F-92EC-F599FEC2FD1D?filter=PR-21926

If it's expected, please add the M-Deliberate-Rendering-Change label.

If this change seems unrelated to your PR, you can consider updating your PR to target the latest main branch, either by rebasing or merging main into it.

@greeble-dev greeble-dev added the X-Contentious There are nontrivial implications that should be thought through label Nov 24, 2025
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Added X-Contentious as I expect there'll be various opinions on enabling by default. Also added C-Dependencies as the PR adds a dependency on half to bevy_mesh - although I'm not sure if the label is appropriate since half is already used by bevy_image.

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A-Rendering Drawing game state to the screen C-Dependencies A change to the crates that Bevy depends on C-Feature A new feature, making something new possible C-Performance A change motivated by improving speed, memory usage or compile times S-Needs-Review Needs reviewer attention (from anyone!) to move forward X-Contentious There are nontrivial implications that should be thought through

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Use low precision format for vertex attributes

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