I have a question for the guys at EPIC regarding Static Mesh batching in UE4.
With UE3 the standard way to create a complex structure like a building was to create a fairly low base shape out of BSP or static mesh, and then “mesh” the outside with highly repeated smaller static mesh instances that are each pretty low on memory and all get batched into a small number of draw calls.
When we moved to mobile development with UE3, we found that individual object count was the biggest killer for rendering performance, (I don’t think UE3 mobile renderer did batching?) So we made our environments out of much larger unique chunks of geometry that were, bigger, used more memory, but kept the object count in the scene way down.
My question is, in UE4 for big scene like a city with multiple buildings, is it OK to use lots (hundreds or thousands) of smaller meshes that will get batched? Similar to what the Proc Buildings system in UE3 did. Does this technique now work for Mobile on UE4?
We want our current game to be cross platform, and I’m not quite sure which way to go.
Cheers
Andrew
Uppercut Games