Multi-material model breaks in play mode
I've got a tree of about 80,000 polygons in its LOD0 level. Its purpose is primarily for higher-end cinematic stuff. 80,000 shouldn't be too much, and other models of similar complexity don't break like this. This model, however, has vertex colors and 4 material IDs applied. Without the IDs, the model seems to work fine, but I need them to assign a branch, end, bark, and secondary bark material to the model. The model looks perfect in Edit Mode, but upon entering Play Mode, some leaves get their material IDs randomly reassigned, disappear, or have missing triangles.
I guess my question is this: Does Unity not play nice with models this complex? Relatively speaking, I wouldn't think this even approaches the kind of complexity one might see in an ArchViz tree.
Is something going on behind the scenes that I don't know about? Is there a way for me to keep all of my materials without having to atlas them?
Answer by Lhiowynh · Dec 01, 2019 at 09:40 AM
So apparently models above about 65,536 get automatically read in as 32 bit. Problem is, 32 bit format is absolute shit in Unity if you have multiple materials assigned, apparently. That said, you have to set your model to 16 bit and let the engine split it up. That fixes it, but I'm annoyed that 32-bit doesn't work as expected.