Very confused about prefab and mesh renderers

Unity Engine
1

I created a prefab and placed a mesh into it. However as the prefab doesn’t have a mesh renderer at the top level it causes Unity to throw an exception when I try to instantiate it.

MissingComponentException: There is no Renderer attached…

I can get it to Instantiate without exceptions if I add a dummy mesh renderer to it from the component menu.

However if I then try to set renderer=false on the prefab it still draws it and when I check the inspector the mesh at the top level has been disabled but not the one underneith (on the actual mesh itself).

Just to add the workflow maybe I’m missing something.

I import a model from Blender.
I then create an empty prefab and drag the fbx importer mesh onto it.

2

If you want a mesh on the object but don’t want to display it (for AI purposes, say) then try adding a MeshFilter component (menu: Component > Mesh > MeshFilter) and then set the mesh you want it to use from the inspector.