As there is no static batching in Unity free, will marking game objects as static actually do anything performance wise? There does not seem to be any difference. But, obviously I don’t have access to the profiler. Or does marking an object as static also change the way light mapping is calculated or anything else in Unity free.
I believe it still affects Dynamic Batching. I could be wrong… but the main difference is that Static Batching happens at build time… and Dynamic happens at run time… so your meshes will still get batched if they’re marked as static… just not at build time.
Yes, it effects light mapping as well as navmesh creation (I believe that is now part of free). If you don’t mark the static, light mapping and navmesh ignore the objects.
No, objects which you want to be dynamically batched should not be marked static. Dynamic batching is automatic (if activated in the player settings) and can’t work on static objects because they are, well, static, meaning that they don’t move.
Note that objects aren’t “just static” or not. There is lightmap static/batching static/occlusion static/etc. That’s what the drop-down menu is for, to select what kind of static an object is.
–Eric