Performance - Which way is better

Development Rendering
1

Hello,

I’m a Rookie in Game Dev, and I want to know with option is better while creating assets for my team.

First of all game will be open world with some instanced places (Something like this one from Elder Scroll, Fallout series) additionally there will be co-op option.

PS: My Goal is to make Modular assets for architecture

And here is my question.

For example I have a Building wall (red element) with Windows (white element) & gutter (green element), and for now I have 4 options in my minds.

Option 1:

Objects are single mesh with 3 Materials ( I can reuse that materials in other places )

Option 2:

Objects are single mesh with 1 texture / atlas

Option 3:

Objects are separate meshes with 1 texture / atlas

Option 4:

Objects are separate meshes with 3 Materials ( I can reuse that materials in other places )

I created example and settings inside UE - screenshot attached.

Cheers & Sorry for poor english.

2

It always depends on how you will use those assets. Normally I would create one single mesh + UV map. :slight_smile:

3

More materials means more draw calls, so the second option will be fastest. But—if those invidual elements can be reused in other configurations you might want them separate. If together they don’t amount to much in the way of poly counts you can keep them together, but if they end up requiring too high of a lightmap then you can separate them so that they use individual lightmaps.

4

You certainly want to avoid mixing tranparent stuff and opaque stuff in the same texture as much as you can. Pointless doing extra stuff in shaders .

5

Thanks for answer, looks like I need to spend more time on planing how to spend my resources :smiley: