blend materials vs set materials

Development Rendering
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1

I’m working on an arch vis project in VR, I need to switch between 4 materials per object.
I created a blueprint that handle the object, Collison, UI (3D clickable objects), materials, etc., until this moment I’ve found 2 ways for handling the materials switching:

  1. using set material node, 4 of them and keep switching between them per object.
  2. using material blend, I used 3 material blend nodes and 3 variables to control which to render

350951-capture.png
350951-capture.png1284×739 183 KB

My question is which is better / lighter to use, set material or blend option?

Notes:

  • I came from Unity, I remember unity does not handle material switching that good, so I need to ask just to know if switching materials over and over per object is heavy! I have calculated the load for the number of object and number of materials that going to be loaded in the scene but I don’t have the knowledge with BP material switching
  • Each single material have basic textures {BaseColor / MetalRoughnessAO / NormalMap}
2

alrighty then … hats off to you.

3

no fading or any other crossing visuals, just switching between materials. my question is about the performance when loading and unloading the materials and the textures!

4

Do you need to fade between them? Otherwise just use a set material node.

5

The loading isn’t something you need to bother yourself with, unless you have something like 1200+ static meshes on the screen at once, and you’re switching materials every .25 seconds :slight_smile: