Outside of showcases, do builders use unions for level designs anymore?

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#1
  • I’m asking for further clarification on how expensive unions truly are for game optimization. While there’s many valid points as to why unions should be avoided I’m still skeptical as this thread shows minimal differences.
  • I need to know if unions can be considered stable enough to be playable on Windows 7+ if unions are used in moderation. If not windows 7+, what’s the lowest OS where unions won’t negatively impact the game’s performance?

What’s the average union / part total I should aim for throughout the entire project? What techniques should I use to optimize unions ( I.e should I avoid using certain materials or spacing unions out etc.)

#2

Having a very small amount is fine… Don’t go crazy. It causes lag but not major.

#3

Yea to echo above, a few here and there is not terrible - it’s not so much about lag as it is just not optimized as it could or should be.

Like if someone is relying on Unions to avoid learning better and more efficient modelling software, then it isn’t the Unions that are the issue.

#4

I don’t think they’re really being used anymore outside of showcases, since i’ve seen many moments where unions wouldn’t load at all. I don’t know anything about the performance with unions, but prior to 2017 I had a very weak 32-bit PC and it ran fine with unions. It’s probably not affecting performance, but it probably does have some problems. My (sort of) fix for this is simply exporting the union as a mesh and reimporting it back.

#5

Of course, people should use modeling software. Unions are just a quick way to refine parts in builds, and should only be used for simple cases.

#6

Is there any tutorial or guide on how I could achieve this?

I’m relying on unions to achieve accurate collisions i.e a player swimming through a sewage pipe. From what I’ve been told by others the collisions from meshes created in 3D software when exported into studio will have unpredictable results.

If I were to use meshes I would have to (correct me if I’m wrong) resort to the following if collision issues had occurred.:

Isn’t parts with transparency bad for performance reasons if it isn’t used in moderation? What would the recommended amount be for transparent parts?

OR

This ,my concern with this is how I would be able to predetermine which sections of the mesh would need to be split in order to fix the collision problem. If I split it into multiple sections wouldn’t that be worse on performance in comparison to having only one union with an accurate collision?

#7

I’m not a builder so please dont weight me.

The only thing I use unions for, is modeling train shells.

I rarely use them for anything else.

#8

Simply open the explorer, select the union, right click and click “Export Selection”. You can then put in a MeshPart and import the union’s mesh.