Design Question (Unity to Unreal)

Development Programming & Scripting C++
1

I need to build a grid, such that it has n Rows and n Cols (Rows x Cols). Each cell in the grid needs text.

I attempted to do this with 1 procedural mesh, but its too slow. I built this using a procedural mesh per grid cell, and its unusable.

I built the very same in less than a few hours in Unity, but in Unreal, the time its taking is…Unreal.

Any advice on this would be most appreciated.

Thank you,

mf

2

Hi-

After another marathon with various mesh constructs, with nothing but dead-ends, I wanted to add more context.

This video was created using Unity (took less than a morning to build this with no prior knowledge!): The Untitled Project.mp4 - Google Drive.

I am trying to create an analog in Unreal, but as I mention, I am not getting anywhere. The following points are where my understanding is right now:

  1. Each mesh has its own draw call (afaict), and the more draw calls the worse performance gets.
  2. I tried creating a large grid of UStaticMeshComponent objects, using the basic Cube asset, but that was incredibly poor performance.
  3. Multiple UProceduralMeshComponent’s, one per grid cell, is also dire.
  4. A single UProceduralMeshComponent with a 2048x2048 cell mesh is fast and EXACTLY what I want, sans a few issues (see below).
  5. Modifying 4 to create a section per cell, is as poor as step 3. I created a section per cell because I need each cell to have its own color, so I have to create a material for each cell too - memory goes through the roof so thats not the right path.

Regarding 4, this works very well - I can create multiple 2048x2048 meshes with full 120 fps. I just dont have a clue how to change a single section of the mesh for each cell, as the color changes or the text would change.

Really hoping someone out there can offer some insight on how I can achieve whats in the video above.

Many thanks,

mf