There are API method in graphics class that lets us to draw same mesh N times. How about different meshes that shares same material? Or same material with different instanced properties? Is there anything like it?
For same material with different instanced properties check Graphics.RenderMeshInstanced and pass instance properties in RenderParams.matProps (first argument of RenderMeshInstanced).
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Great. But about
Graphics.RenderMeshes(Mesh[] meshes, Material mat, NativeArray<T> instanceData);
Is there any functionality to draw multiple unique meshes with a single draw call?
Yes, use the line of code you just pasted.
They just need the same material
@DevDunk , you misunderstood what kaiyum was asking. There is no RenderMeshes method.
I think, the only way to do this is to merge the meshes first. After all, you can have only one vertex buffer and index buffer bind call if you want to render it all with one draw.
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Thank you, yes I wanted to render many meshes rather than one mesh. Combining meshes is not handy. What if the meshes are dynamic and changes position every frame, yet have same material?
In such cases, something like “RenderMeshes” would be helpful. At this stage of unity, what I think of, is completely taking over control of rendering with native rendering plugin and passing ECS like data around through interop.
At first I thought there is something in unity for this already. Alas, there isn’t!
It’s an interesting question. I googled a bit and found this:
What you are trying to do is called MultiDrawIndirect. There is an extension for OpenGl called GL_ARB_multi_draw_indirect. There is also a DX12 method called ExecuteIndirect and a Vulkan method called
vkCmdDraw[Indexed]Indirect.
For DX11, there is only a NVAPI extension by NVidia: D3D11 Vendor Hacks - Google Sheets
So technically, it’s possible with the latest APIs.
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Actually, Unity does exactly that behind the scene but it’s only performant for small meshes. It’s called dynamic batching: https://docs.unity3d.com/2022.2/Documentation/Manual/DrawCallBatching.html
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I wanted to support very old android devices. The idea was to render meshes of same material in a single go. Since the latest API is most likely not be supported by old devices, so it seems like “nothing can be done about it”.
For static meshes, I have used runtime static batching with combine utility(not that one but the other one).
Edit: My meshes are quite large. 1k-1.5k each and about 40-60 meshes.
There isn’t anything I know of to do what you want on those devices. I guess you are trying to optimize by reducing the draw call count, but this isn’t a way to do that. If the meshes are different they must be submitted as different draw calls. Binding the mesh geometry is part of what makes a draw call. It must be done once for each unique mesh, at the device layer, until you get into the world of more modern techniques such as the multi-draw indirect API mentioned, which requires modern hardware.
Dynamic batching is an optimization where, on some old devices, such as android/GLES 2, it can be faster to merge a few small meshes into one, and submit one draw call. But the limit for us taking that path is a few hundred vertices, because after that, the cost of copying data into 1 shared buffer outweighs any potential benefit of saving the draw calls. And it’s very “iffy” in a lot of cases whether dynamic batching is ever a good idea. We don’t advise using it on new hardware, and I believe it is disabled by default on certain project types (eg HDRP) because it is almost obsolete as an effective optimization technique.
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We have introduced (or more like rewritten) an API in 2022.1 which allows you to much more efficiently draw many meshes. See this forum post for more information New BatchRendererGroup API for 2022.1
It’s not perfect. You will still get a separate draw call for each mesh of course, but you can skip a lot of layers in the unity engine. The downside is of course that you will be responsible for setting up a lot of things yourself.
We are hoping to land something like MDI for this interface in the future.
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