I’m attempting to reduce the number of material slots present on my final SKM output. My setup is such that each individual mesh part uses a very simple UV strategy, so a single texture can be used for everything. A few of the things I’ve tried so far:
- If each of my input parts creates its own Mesh Section, then I end up with a large number material slots, which is a lot of draw calls. Not great, and completely unnecessary in my case.
- If I use the Extend Mesh Section modifier node, that does appear to reduce the number of material slots, but then for some reason, the output texture appears to be extended (it is made larger and larger as I add more mesh section modifiers). I can’t seem to modulate that behavior.
- Moreover, modifiers do not compose well. So there is really no way for me to change my current pipeline in the CO to move away from skeletal mesh switches. There is simply no alternative. I need to be able to preserve my switches, while still being able to merge the mesh sections so that my final output has only a single material slot.
- I’ve also attempted to use an Edit Mesh Node (with the same tagging and such), passing in the same reference material, setting my texture override, etc, etc. To no avail.
Is there a different way I should be approaching this? A different way to keep the number of mesh sections low, or another way to force a single output mesh section so that there will only be 1 material slot?
An important note is that my graph has a single SkeletalMeshComponent, because I need a single output SKM (done, that is working just fine).
I’ve also tried setting the layout to Overlay mode for the skeletal meshes I’m adding to the graph, which causes the following error to appear in the console:
```
A layout block goes across different texture tiles. This is not supported yet.
```
Perhaps this pattern I am attempting to use is just not yet supported?