One master material for all purposes, or few separate ones.

Hi, so the question is in the header. I have one big master material to cover all my needs by swithcing blend modes in Instances and I am wondering if it is somehow hits perfomance, and it is better practice to have, lets say, separate master material for translucensy, one for subsurface, one for opaque and so on.

Ideally you have a few for different purposes, this is how many studios usually handle it. You have a prop, a translucency, a decal one, etc. It’s easier to maintain and its the generally the best workflow.

Depending on the game, you might get away with only using one, but I really can’t see the benefit of that.

Using multiple switch nodes in a material can be a bad practice as the engine needs to compile a variant for each switch node combination. It can quickly spiral out of control:

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