I’m starting to work with static meshes to populate a level, and I’m unsure of the best practices when working with SMs.
For example, I want to place multiple wooden planks on the ground, and from some basic research, Instanced Static Meshes seem to be the best approach to ensure good performance.
For future usage, how should I decide between Static meshes and Instanced SMs?
Any advice or pointers to where I could find general tips and best practices would be greatly appreciated.
Hi awdlkasdf,
Yes, ISMs are the best way to go, and keeping them as simple building blocks into more complex objects is very astute!
It’s pretty simple - if you’re wanting to use “vertex painting” or complex details - keep them as static meshes (or preferably find another way and use ISMs) - otherwise, if you’re using more than one of them, go for ISM (HISM is better).
Try and aim for a whole level of ISMs for everything non-interactive.
Another benefit of using “building block” type ISMs is that you can create a large variety of scenery using the same meshes (less draw calls and less VRAM)
I’m still to do some tests - but it may be faster to leave them rendering as ISMs at large distances and not use HLODs (would mean less VRAM and disk footprint)
I’ve just finished a whole series of benchmarks and using HISMs is faster in every single test - even faster than MergedMeshes: