Since there have been many updates to unions, how do they currently perform compared to meshparts?
I’m a solo developer and, since I don’t know how to use Blender, I’m considering using unions to make some simple non-blocky enemies. They might not look as good as meshparts, but given my situation, I feel unions might be the way to go. However, I’ll only choose them if they perform as well as meshparts. I’ve heard they used to cause lag, but I’m not sure about their performance now. If anyone can test the performance difference between the two, I’d appreciate it. I plan to use them for map geometry and enemies, so I want to make sure they won’t negatively impact the game’s performance.
There’s a stigma behind unions that has truth but is sometimes misguided.
Roblox’s CSG engine is horrid at optimising how many triangles are generated when you are creating unions, which isn’t helped by the fact you can’t adjust what you’ve generated without exporting it to blender.
But what you can do is be mindful with how you create your unions, experiment with negatives, like negating a chunk out of a block to make an “L” shape instead of unioning two parts together, etc etc there is a lot behind mindful union work, trust me, I know…
Be sure RenderFidelity is set to automatic (though that does literally nothing most of the time), and look into CollisionFidelity (For most objects you’ll probably just be using “Hull” or “Box” collisions, whilst “Default” is recommended for doorways and other scenarios where more accurate collisions are required).
But, I recommend looking up how to start modelling in blender, it’s much easier to keep triangle counts low whilst making objects. I’m just starting to get into blender myself and have already started making & using objects.
Unions have been improved quite a lot since release, but you shouldn’t use them apart from real-time calculated deformations. Meshes are your go-to if you’re building and not trying to make a gimmicky game mechanic.
