Question Efficient characters and lighting.

[Aminator]

Ii notice a big difference in fps when loading different appearance presets. Are there any particular characters or looks that are more efficient then usual I can use for this purpose?
I've used the CUA people before but I want this character to be functional with expressions and dialog.

I want to do a 3 person scene so I'm trying to be as efficient as possible. Now that I'm paying attention to it im noticing some great looking CUA environments will leave me with 2-300 fps and others 100. And sometimes adding light to a scene increases fps.

 

[atani]

Hair tends to have a strong impact on FPS. The first thing I do when creating a appearance preset or taking one made by someone else is to go to hair options and lower the 2 values on top (can't remember the names) to below 20, perhaps Sim something (bottom) if it looks ok still.
Sim clothing will also have quite an impact, so try to keep sim on only where or when needed, etc.

As of lighting, that's where I know much less, but as you guessed, big impact here too. Not using shadows on a light will help, the type of light and surroundings will also affect it, you need to experiment quite a bit.

 

[Aminator]

Sim cloth and hair were the two I was playing with before. I also read that spot and directional lights are better.
I'm definitely still using resources I don't need to though.
It must be the shadows? Maybe I'm using lights with shadows and big ranges and then when I add more light the frame rate goes up because it doesn't have to work so hard processing them?

 

[HolySchmidt]

It makes absolutely no sense that you could gain performance by adding light, really. I think the factor here should be your setting for "light sources" and some differences that may occur by adding new lights. For example: you already have 3 lights in a scene, your setting for light sources is "3". By adding another light VaM decides automatically what light source is to be turned off to stay within the limit range.
Adding more lights always decreases performance, what else. If you own a powerful GPU you can add more lights without FPS going down, but definitely not going up.

And yes: hair has a HUGE impact on FPS. Really, really big. Clothing as well and body physics. The holy trinity