Just a quick question to some of the vet programmers and developers on importing .
There two sections to my question .
I am building an open world game but Have a large mesh that has many sub meshes built into it . I’m going to use the spawn actor node to bring the mesh into the game during game play …
My question is if there say a building that will spawn . Is it better to all the furniture (Static objects inside the building ) and sub meshes built into one FBX or should I keep them separate.
In what direction is the correct workflow pattern for this in terms of Draw Calls , Materials , and instancing .
Which method would save on performance issues and what is generally the industry standards for large meshes ?
thanks in advance =)
If you dont want to manipulate the internal mesh elements is ok to have all in a single static mesh. bear in mind that collider meshes are created/defined by object so if you need to get accurate collisions with all the sub objects in the mesh you must solve this with a single collider. Also this multi element mesh needs correct materials ID per element so you can set the right materials to each element.
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In general, starting out, probably safest to keep individual things separated. You will have greatest flexibility this way. In programming they have the Single Responsibility Rule and even in art world I think the principle is useful to follow (at least during production when you are figuring things out.)
A thousand times throughout your project you will change your mind about what you need, don’t need, and best way to organize. If you keep individual things separate, life will be easier through this process.
At the end, you have many options for how to combine, batch, occlude, etc etc all the final art that has made it to the end. On Youtube Unreal channel has a few in-depth videos about optimization techniques, but the general idea is always simple: combine like things, remove things that aren’t seen.
TL:DR - don’t worry about optimization until later. Try to keep your art workflow as flexible as possible so that you can continually experiment. Optimization is extra work, but all of your art is highly variable for a long time.
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