How to optimize your scene

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Note: Spline is constantly improving and many optimizations are made over time. It is likely that some of the suggestions here won't be needed in the future.

Performance Panel

To help with optimization, the Performance Panel offers some key metrics and opportunities for improvement to keep the load times and performance of the scene fast and efficient.

You can access the Performance Panel from the Export Panel.

From there, metrics to help you understand and optimize the scene are available:

Export Size.
Loading Time.
Number of Objects.
Number of Polygons.
Number of Materials.
Number of Audio Assets.
Number of Lights.
Number of Post-processing Effects.
Number of Textures.

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Values for Export Size and Loading Time are measured with an average internet speed and are estimated. Actual values may vary.

Opportunities

Below Metrics, there are Opportunities, which are suggestions for improvement with actions inside them based on the state of the scene.

There are three types of Opportunities:

Red: Most important to improve performance and the overall state of the scene.
Yellow: Important for improvement, not critical.
Gray: Suggestions to keep the scene clean and remove unused assets. Not directly related to performance.

To keep a good performance, follow these suggestions when exporting and embedding your designs:

🪛 Reduce the number of polygons

In Spline, all objects are geometries formed from triangular polygons. Two triangles form a square (quad). The fewer the number of polygons, the fastest it will be rendered/loaded on the screen.

Usually, smoother objects have higher amounts of polygons which increases load time.
On parametric objects (like the sphere, cube, cylinder, etc). You can control the number of ‘Sides’. You can reduce the sides to increase performance.
When working with smooth subdivision objects.

Avoid using more than 3 subdivision levels unless you really need them. Most objects look good with only 1 or 2 subdivision levels.
Avoid increasing the base subdivisions unless you need to. This button will ‘bake’ or apply the subdivision and you won't be able to return to the original version.
If you are importing objects from other software or libraries make sure you use an optimized and lower polygon version.

You can use the Compression settings to improve the loading/performance of your exported scenes. Please be aware that higher levels of compression can also reduce precision or quality in the geometries.

✂️ Reduce the number of objects & keep materials simple

Having lots of objects will increase the loading times and also reduce the performance (more objects = more polygons, more materials, etc).

Delete objects that aren’t visible (like inside another object, or behind other objects). If you think people won't be seeing these objects in the final experience, you can delete them.
Avoid adding images/textures to your materials if possible (images, especially big ones, add more time to load).
Use simple lighting. We recommend working with less than 3 lights per scene. Too many lights can reduce the performance of the scene.
Try to keep the materials simple, don’t use too many layers if not necessary.
Post-processing effects can reduce performance (especially if you activate many effects at the same time).

👉 Next Steps

How to Import Content