Draw Calls

The more draw calls, the more CPU power we need. So, ideally, as an artist, we try to keep the draw calls as little as possible.

Every time your game engine tells the GPU to “draw” something, it’s about how many separate things the GPU has to be told to render (objects and materials can be unique).

• 1 object with 1 material = 1 draw call
• 1 object with 12 materials (rubber, wood, fabric etc..) = 12 draw calls
• 10 objects with 12 materials = 120 draw calls

So you can have 1 material per object and its fine, even if you have 2 materials for an object, that’s ok but you can see how it could get out of hand fast with many objects with many materials, and your computer might get a bit upset.

The more we split the materials, the more we can cross parts over without loading big texture sets which means RAM savings.