Hi!
What are the benefits of having static mesh and animated mesh and not just model?

The only difference I see is to have all meshes combined to one mesh and then it's only draw calls by materials.
Also, static mesh doesn't use skinning at all, so having a skinned mesh used on static will result to bind pose only.
So that means the node transformation is not needed for static meaning less memory used.
Is there more?

Is it better recommended to have 2 different asset types or just Model asset and combine at runtime?
Could be a Static Mesh Component and Animated Mesh Component, both using a Model but Static combine when a mesh is set.
But this combine calculation could be already made during import of FBX depending on the type of import the user select.

Thanks!

Alundra said:
Is it better recommended to have 2 different asset types or just Model asset and combine at runtime?

For editor-interactions, definately only one asset. Whatever FBX, Obj, 3ds-file is all that developers/artists really wanna feed into your program on that front.

Could be a Static Mesh Component and Animated Mesh Component, both using a Model but Static combine when a mesh is set.
But this combine calculation could be already made during import of FBX depending on the type of import the user select.

The thing is, skinned meshes probably have some more properties that static meshes don't have. Just check out Unities SkinnedMeshRenderer. (https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/SkinnedMeshRenderer.html)​​​

Do you want to have all those settings on a component that is never going to use skinning?
Also, I think there is a point to be made that “static” and “skinned” meshed are probably never really interchanged that much. Have a rock in your game? static. Player? Skinned. So there is no point in keeping them the same structure for interchangability.

;TL;DR; Static and skinned meshes are so different you want to handle them differently, usually