Multiple Materials on Assets

BKegerise

I've been working on a scene that has a couple single objects with quite a few materials applied to its surface. I was wondering if it was more efficient to break this object up into many different objects with just one material a piece, or to leave it as one object with many materials? My level seems to be lagging a bit and I'm wondering if this may be one of the causes.

Shift`

Ah man that is a shit ton of materials.
If my memory serves me well there should be a view mode in which it shows texture complexity. And it should show you what is going to bring your system down.

As for having that many materials, I would probably try breaking it down a little, and maybe merging some textures? 56 is way too many for one object.

sprunghunt

It is more efficient to not have that many materials on an object. Each one of those materials essentially draws as a separate render call. You should use render to texture (max) or transfer maps (maya) to create a new object that has a single material on it.

BKegerise

Thanks for the input. It was a rounded building with windows (and thus reflections) facing in all sorts of directions) not to mention different materials for walls, floors, ceilings, etc.

I'm going to break it all up and give it a try. It's a bit of a pain, but we'll see if it makes a difference.

sprunghunt

BKegerise wrote: »

Thanks for the input. It was a rounded building with windows (and thus reflections) facing in all sorts of directions) not to mention different materials for walls, floors, ceilings, etc.

I'm going to break it all up and give it a try. It's a bit of a pain, but we'll see if it makes a difference.

udk has a system specifically designed to help with the construction of buildings. It's called procbuilding. Here's some info:

https://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ProceduralBuildings.html

BKegerise

That is soooo cool, thanks so much, I will be checking that out.

Unfortunately this specific project is a very unique building and it's the only one in the scene, but I definitely want to do something with that later.

Separating out all of the objects seems to have helped a bit. I also found that my master material was probably trying to accomplish a bit too much and was lagging the scene as well. Thanks again for the input both of you.