What's the best way to display hordes of Skeletal mesh characters without having too many draw calls?

I know how to use instanced static meshes and merge skeletal meshes into one mesh. But still if I want to have many skeletal meshes on the screen I haven’t been able to find a way to do it when I have at least 1+ draw call for each skeletal mesh. I always hit a wall if I want to have many characters on the screen. Does anyone have an answer or Is there a tutorial about doing this somewhere?

hordes of Skeletal mesh characters

How about a slightly different approach:

I know plenty of games have done this before niagara came along so I was hoping for something I was more familiar with. So far I’ve only done basic effects with niagara… explosions, gunfire, shielding etc… So the video doesn’t make complete sense to me yet and I’m not sure if niagara characters would be able to do all the things I need them to do. But If that’s the best way to do it I’ll have to learn more about it. thanks :+1: