High res portrait causes frame drop when starting conversation

[arvz]

Hello,

I've got some high resolution portraits in use in the game. They are png files with transparency, 2524x3189 and are about 1.2mb each.

When I trigger a conversation I notice a sudden and noticeable momentary drop in frame rate that causes the conversation UI transition to be 'skipped' basically.

I know for sure this is happening because of my high resolution sprite because the profiler says SpriteMeshGenerator.TraceShape is taking a very high amount of time to process. if I compress my portrait down in the import settings it fixes the frame drop - however I would like to keep the portraits at a high resolution.

At max size 1024 in the import settings, the frame drop is minimised, but still noticeable. 512 is the highest max size I've found to cause no frame drop at all, however at this size the portrait looks very low quality.

I'm developing on Unity 5.6.3f1 on Windows 10, on a GTX 970, i7-2600 and 16GB RAM.

Is there any way to make the portraits load faster so it doesn't cause such a frame drop?

Thanks

[Tony Li]

Hi,

Are the portraits assigned to actors in your dialogue database?

If so, have you ticked the Dialogue Manager's Preload Resources checkbox?

[arvz]

Yes, there are 6 portraits assigned to 2 characters at the moment, all assigned in the dialogue database actors tab.

Preload resources is already ticked

[Tony Li]

Thanks for the details. I'll get a fix for this into the next release of the Dialogue System, and I'll make a patch available before then.

[arvz]

If anyone's experiencing the same issue - I'm happy to report after testing 1.7.5 beta that this has been resolved with some extra features that's coming in the new version

[Tony Li]

Thanks for confirming! Version 1.7.5 should be submitted to the Asset Store in a few days. It will take 5-10 business days after that to appear on the Asset Store, but it will be available for immediate download from the Pixel Crushers customer download site as soon as it's submitted.