Texture optimization question

Unity Engine
1

I’m building alot of tanks for a game. And the tanks could possibly have a semi modular design. So the tracks could be changed. The gun turret or cannon could possibly be swapped out. I’m wondering if I should have each module have its own UV map/material. Would this effect performance considerably rather then 1 texture for the whole vehicle?

So instead of having all of the parts on the tank be on one big texture, there might be 3 separate textures (chassis, turret, wheels and tracks). Parts of the chassis might even be modular. How should I go about this texture wise? I heard the more materials the more draw calls. So if I do have modular parts with separate textures, then maybe I should ‘‘atlas’’ all the the textures together at runtime? I’m not sure how that works.

thanks!

2

Hi roger0,

Ideally a single object, texture, continuous uv set is the best.

Check out these pages for some optimization tips:

Ultimately I think it depends on balancing your project’s goals, and target the platform’s performance on how you end up approaching it.

3

Hello. Yeah I’ve read some of those pages. I’m wondering though if its possible to merge a few different textures together while the game is running. A example would be someone customizing their tank, and they are putting on a few different weapons and suspension parts on it, which all have their separate texture maps, Then once the player is done, they press finish and all of the textures get merged into one big texture.