Reply To: COLLAB2021 – HQ – Stylized Fantasy Environment

I originally posted this to my team thread, but it might be better to put here:

I have a question about data linking, optimization, and performance. 

I understand the benefits of using data linked objects for the sake of mapping numerous UVs to the same map space, and thus cutting down overall texture data. Clearly with that comes reduced time painting, and modeling. 

But is data linking reducing the data load based on the vertices themselves? I imagine that you’re essentially instancing the object, which I’ve always believed had huge performance advantages, but I don’t know why I think that. 

From a rendering standpoint, I could see that you’d probably be getting better performance on memory allocation by having smaller data chunks with the linked object data, but the instanced copies in my example below have faces that aren’t being culled on the interior, so the payoff would probably be less. Not sure if I’m assessing this correctly.

If data linking does increase poly-related performance, does this translate to other environments? For example, can you export to Unity in a way that the data-linked geometry is functioning as multiple copies of the same base object? Or would you have to use a different method to have this translate properly?

EXAMPLE:

Having these stones setup as 4 stones that have been duplicated and data linked gives me 278 verts. As single users they hop up to 2k.

Alternately by making them single users, booling out their interiors, and then optimizing their geometry the best I could, got me down to 1,483, without data linking. 

Retopo looked like it could get MAYBE get me closer to 1000. I started it to see how much labor was going to be involved with what kind of reward, and about 40% through I was already at 500. 

So, what approach would be a) most optimal for performance as it relates to this project? and b) most optimal as it relates to exporting assets to game engines or other environments?