Virtual Staging: 3D Asset Guidelines and Limitations

Virtual Staging - 3D Asset Guidelines and Limitations

In order to create the best experiences for your users, it is important to optimize the 3D assets you use in your Virtual Tours for peak performance.

CAPTUR3D's engine already does a lot of the groundwork to optimise rendering and make your Virtual Tour as performant as it can be. However, like any 3D applications, user experience is bound to the performance of individual devices/hardware running on web browsers. 

Aside from individual device and hardware capabilities, performance is largely impacted by 3D asset quality, and the number of assets placed in a Virtual Tour. This article will help you determine the best practices for optimizing your custom 3D assets, explaining what these file limitations are, and provide ‘best practise guidelines’ for placing both supplied CAPTUR3D 3D assets, and your own custom 3D assets into your Virtual Tours. 

The most important limitations to consider for 3D assets files are:

1. Triangles
2. Draw Calls

Triangles

Triangles (triangular polygons) build the exterior mesh (or shape) of the 3D asset. 

More triangles in a 3D asset equate to a more complex mesh/shape of the model, which can therefore result in longer loading speeds of the asset.

Placing a single 3D asset with a very high triangle count inside a CAPTUR3D Virtual Tour may be sufficient for loading speeds, but placing a large number of 3D assets with high triangle counts on each 3D asset can affect speed and performance of the Virtual Tour.

Draw Calls

Draw Calls contain all the information that tell your device and browser about textures, shaders and rendering objects etc.  A complex 3D asset, or a selection of complex 3D assets (with many different texture layers for example) will require higher CPU and GPU power that can affect performance.

In the specific scenario of a Virtually Staged CAPTUR3D Virtual Tour, Draw Calls are initiated and determined by what you are directly looking at within your Virtual Tour. For example, if your Virtual Tours ‘Start Location’ has a large number of 3D assets (all with multiple, complex textures) in the opening Field Of View FOV, this will affect the performance of your Virtual Tour. 

The same rule applies if you have a very large open space (commercial building or factory) with a large number of 3D assets inserted, or switching to the ‘Dollhouse View’ to see all 3D assets in every room of a Virtual Tour. This large, open FOV will require more Draw Calls at one time, therefore affecting performance of the Virtual Tour.

3D Asset Specifications - Recommended Guidelines for Virtual Tours

From conducting user research, we found that the average number of 3D assets generally used in a residential Virtual Tour are:

Average no. of 3D assets per tour: 106
Based on the above factors (to maintain maximum performance) each 3D Asset should contain a limit of:

Triangles: <6,500

Draw calls: <2 draw calls

File size: <5mb

To download a sample of a CAPTUR3D 3D asset, please CLICK HERE

*(For reference, the above sample asset has: 1 draw call and 2917 triangles).

For any custom 3D assets that you are wanting to upload into the CAPTUR3D Virtual Staging interface, there’s a helpful website that allows you to upload your 3D assets, and it visibly generates the number of Triangles and Draw Calls of your chosen asset. Please visit: https://gltf-viewer.donmccurdy.com 

The above guidelines will gradually improve as development updates occur on both the Matterport and CAPTUR3D side (as well as the hardware you use to view the Virtual Tour).

Device specifications - Recommended Guidelines

The limitations and guidelines for Virtual Staging differ depending on what device the end-user is viewing the Virtual Tour on (Desktop, PC or mobile devices). The internal specs of the hardware device (as well as internet speed) will also have an effect on performance. As a general guide:

Mobile

• 50 draw calls per frame/field of view
• 500k triangles per frame/field of view

Desktop

• 200 draw calls per frame/field of view
• 2 million triangles per frame/field of view