with the caveat that a decal is almost always the most expensive option... What you should do is entirely dependent on context Assuming you add a second material to the mesh, if you have 4 of these things on screen you introduce 4 extra draw calls - which is not very many if you have 100 of these things on screen you…
"For reference, the vertex color data on a 500 triangle mesh is roughly equivalent to adding a 64x64 3 channel dxt1 texture" Could you explain the calculation for this estimate ?
You have to add the cost of texture sampling. It's really for the sake of science as imo the difference should be small. https://forum.unity.com/threads/performance-implications-between-vertex-colors-vs-textures.671698/
Performance wise, having 2 materials on one object is equivalent to have 2 "splitted" objects with 1 material. Usually i only use this for easier maintenance, as editing several objects in a 3d software could be a bit more of work if they're meant to be "welded" Unity can batch together objects with the same material…
ah well, now you mention it - i did my sums wrong. well spotted dxt1 is 4 bits per pixel vert color 32 bits per vertex 64 * 64 = 4096 pixels *4bits = 16384 32/4 = 8 pixels per vertex 16384 / 8 = 2048
Vertex color isn't cheap - its 32 bits per vertex and can't be shared as readily as texture information. It really only makes sense if you are applying unique information to sparse geometry or have a fixed limit on texture samplers and have run out. For reference, the vertex color data on a 500 triangle mesh is roughly…
I haven't made the geo yet, I'm still in the planning stage! If you have any suggestions for good geo I'd love to hear them. This is for an FPS map, roughly similar size to a typical COD map. I'm planning on making a modular building kit for it (it'll mostly be similar styled warehouse-like buildings, nothing too…