multiple tillable materials or one unique material?
polycounter lvl 7
i have some store fronts that need texturing, they can be done by some tillable texture but with several materials for the same store front, they can also be textured using a unique texture created in substance painter and using only one material in unreal, which is better for performance, i know that each material is an extra draw call so more draw calls or more textures?
Replies
Depends much on the particular storefronts. Do you have image references? You could make a breakdown of the reference, identify what kind of surfaces you need, might fit on one atlas. If you need to cover large areas, maybe you combine tiling material + atlas.
thank you but generally which is better for performance, i mean if i have 3 store fronts each use the same basic materials, any banners can be added as decals later maybe, assume each front has 3 materials so that is 3 draw calls for each store front and 3 tillable texture sets, but if i use unique texturing for each store front (assume a 2k map would be enough for each store front so resolution isn't a problem) i would have only one material per store front, so that is 1 draw call per object and 3 unique texture sets for 3 store fronts, which is better in this case?
Sure, saving draw calls is nice, but I think in this case being smart about texture memory is more relevant than that (depends on the budget of course). The more different storefronts using shared atlas/trimsheet + tiling textures the more memory efficient compared to individual texture sets for each store. There are some nice storefront examples on artstation from spiderman games.
Here is a proof that the "general usable materials assigned by slots" is the best performing and also good looking solution.
Use a standard size of e.g. 1 square meter for the UV projection (e.g. box/cube projection) and make some seamless tileable materials with now significant spots. for large areas use different scaled textures in the material setup to break up the repetition.
that way you or the buyers/users can easy swap out any materials on your storefronts.
Here is such work of mine using this workflow: over 10.000 actors, each between 5k and 15k tris, summing up to 100 millsion tris in UE 4.26 running fine even in editor and while recording on 2 years old hardware: https://youtu.be/xmZOM6ThJ1E?t=11
more info and examples of this workflow demonstrated here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/example-for-use-60585310
This example might also be helpful
UE4 Modular Building Set Breakdown - by Jacob "jacob07777" Norris. Gritty urban city modular system. File:JacobNorris Building Breakdown.pdf (1.5 MB)
from this page on our wiki: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Modular_environments