Does it make a difference if I use the same mesh with different Materials?

Hey there.
Does it make a difference (performance-wise) if I use the same mesh - a Wall for example - with different Materials?
Is it “better” to use different meshes with one material?

Id say its best to use the same mesh, with different instanced materials.

You got me wrong I guess.
When placing a static mesh, you can override the material for this static mesh. Does it make a difference to override this material?

Nope. This does not have an impact on the performance.
The material you assign in the static mesh editor is just the dafault.
So by “overriding” you just set the material to a value different than the default.

And when the game gets cooked, the material assigments are fixed anyway…

Are you talking about inherent performance loss or performance tuning?

Performance tuning wise geometry has it’s own performance loss and UE4 does a very good job of maintaining the performance envelop excluding applied materials so if you follow a few rules it does the work for you as a procedural.

The inherent performance loss as to applied materials can become a massive problem as there is no way to control abuse as a procedure where overriding the material can make a huge difference in at least frame rate performance.

A good example of the benefit of overriding the material is on a LOD using lower res materials that will have a better performance return than lower detailed geometry.

Ah, I see. Thank you for the explanation :slight_smile: