My upcoming game, Tropics Paradise, features a big sprawling map, and we’re currently optimizing the game to help cope with the severe RAM usage testers have been experiencing.
As we reduce parts from the map, I’m discussing with my builder on whether or not, turning trees into unions or meshes are more efficient at reducing lag and improving performance a lot.
What’s better to do? Meshes, or unions?
I find that the CSG system that is used to create unions generally isn’t as effective currently as it makes a lot of unnecessary polygons. For a somewhat complicated asset that would require a lot of parts that is used frequently I recommend the usage of meshes.
Alright.
I would definitely agree with using meshes.
An older thread with a similar topic in case anyone is interested.
Yeah, meshes are definitely the way to go. ROBLOX’s in house CSG generates roughly 3-4x the triangles for a basic shape than blender would.
However, don’t forget that huge amounts of unique meshes will lead to long loading times for they will have to be fetched, and there’s some collision issues. As in the aforementioned post above, it’s really rec commended if you use meshes for complex things with many polys and avoid unions if u can. However, don’t forget about parts, they are the least performance intensive of meshes and unions for general tasks (not complex many polys where meshes can be used) use them when you can.
I find meshes to be more reliable as the triangle count is higher and the chance of “invisible bricks” is greatly decreased.
If you’re overly pedantic. Export large chunks of parts AND unions (100+) as obj and re-import it as .fbx meshpart.
You could possibly decimate the triangles during the process to reduce the triangle count if it serves an issue.