Some questions on best practices

Hi guys,

I have a few questions regarding animation between 3rd party apps and UE4.
I have a machine with a few objects (cogs and sliding parts), at the moment all the animation is key framed in Maya and then baked and the entire machine is then exported as an FBX.

With regards to optimising the object though…

  1. Is it better to bake out the moving parts in Maya and export that, or to do the animation inside of BluePrint using timelines / rotators etc?
  2. Does each moving object generate its own draw call or is the entire FBX file seen as just 1 object?
  3. Does each part generate a draw call for the material even if the entire model uses just 1 material?
  4. Should the non moving parts be imported as static Meshes and then combined inside an actor blueprint with the animated FBX?
  5. Is it necessary to create a separate UV channel for light maps on an animated object? (I’m guessing this would be pointless).

Just to be clear, the animation is made up for around 10 objects, 8 of which are animated but there is no skeleton in Maya. Everything is key framed and baked

Thanks for any insight you can offer on this.

D