I was previously using BSP brushes to create static mesh components, door, windows floor etc but found some of them were difficult to handle to create for example a pipe. So i switched to using the shapes instead the only problem comes when i convert several of them into a blueprint i notice a great drop in performance and FPS.
I realise this is likely due to the number of draw calls when i convert so many shapes into a single entity with many different materials being used but found it also happens even when i try to only use two or three different materials. I was wondering if there is something I am doing wrong here is it right to build an object out of several different static mesh’s then create a blueprint from it, i did this simply so i could spend time putting a blueprint together then be able to copy and paste easily once its finished, like floor’s, ceilings walls etc.
Should i be going about this another way? I notice when I use non reflective colour materials for example basic wall over chrome i know that i wont get the reflections but also the size map of the blueprint drops from around 22mb for a single wall section down to about 30kb.
I wonder if I am working on this correctly, should I be using BSP components instead to build up a large static mesh with the different materials applied then convert to static mesh once done? Would this help lower the draw calls and mean rendering, performance and more importantly FPS would not drop so much each time.
Final note I have tried using BSP shapes to then create a static mesh but when I drag across any of them into the level the screen freezes and then the application crashes and an error report is sent before it restarts without the new mesh.
Thanks
Chris