Multiple pieces when you export as fbx or does it all work the same? Just curious.
From my experience, it is always best to merge objects to reduce draw calls. Doesn’t matter though if you export it this way or if you merge it inside the engine (place single 100 wooden beams -> combine it into one large pile object once you’re done).
- It’s even more complicated, if a mesh has 10 materials, for the rendering engine it’s the same as having 10 separate objects.
- The exporters do not combine objects, the fbx exporter surely doesn’t. Though the importer of a game engine might have an option for that.
Yeah, I know extra materials definitely create a drop in performance. But fbx exporter has an option for exporting selected objects (As opposed to an entire scene) so therefore I could choose whether my exported mesh consists of multiple objects or separate loose parts under one object. I was just wondering what considerations I should make doing one over the other.
Of if I’m missing something or if both methods would end up with the same result.
The resulting fbx file always contains a scene not an object. That’s why you can export collision objects and you could also export LOD meshes (if Blender’s fbx exporter supported it) into a single file. That’s why fbx files can contain a whole scene with hundreds of objects. Separate objects exported into a single fbx file are still separate objects and it depends on the game engine’s importer whether it merges them into a single object or keeps them separated. That option of the exporter you mentioned only determines which objectS are exported so both options have the same result if you select all the objects in the scene.
You can test it by exporting to fbx and importing it back to Blender.
Excellent, thanks for the great information. Would you know how Unreal 4 would use make a difference in what the two methods accomplish? Thats really all I use with Blender, although I’d love to incorporate ZBrush, Substance Tools, and Marvelous Designer into my workflow someday.
Unreal 4 has an importer option ‘Combine Meshes’.
You do know you can parent your LODs to a empty and make changes to like two lines of code in the fbx exporter and export LODs? I know it works for Unreal4 ,but not sure about anything else. https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/community-content-tools-and-tutorials/119508-cyaoeu-s-bag-of-blender-tricks?146531-cyaoeu-s-bag-of-Blender-tricks=&viewfull=1
Hey, thanks for the info.
This was for 2.78 and appears to be some changes to the fbx exporter for 2.79a. I’m sure you can still edit and make it work.
I just counted it, that exporter has 12,249 LINES! I will definitely stay away from having to look for changes, understand and change that after every release. It scares the shit out of me.
Looks like we don’t have to edit the code to work with 2.79, just have to add a custom property to the empty to make it work. Check out the lastest reply on that thread.
Thanks for keeping this thread updated with useful information.