Static Mesh or BSP?

[cmf0106]

In the image below I have circled two items.
A. Columns
B. Pipelines


I want to know what was used to create these items, either BSP or a static mesh and why. After watching a brief tutorial video I understand the basics of a BSP, but im still lost when it comes to static meshes. If someone would please describe a static mesh in basic terms and why they are used would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[johanz]

BSP is very bad on performance. And shouldn't be used in the final game.

[DSalimander]

BSP is very, VERY basic geometry. BSP is just to generally carve out the level. As a good rule of thumb, anything that can be identified as simple geometric primitives (cubes, cylinders, spheres, planes, etc) are probably BSP brushes. Anything that needs any remote amount of detail are static meshes. Static meshes are special objects that I can easily bet UDK optimizes on-the-fly a lot better than BSP for very good reasons, as well as the fact that you can throw them down and tweak each instance placed to your liking (nonuniform scaling, collisions (BSP has no collision options besides what the physics in the materials requests), etc) a lot easier than thousands of BSP brushes. The two things you have circled are unarguably static meshes due to the amount of detail they posses and how many of them are placed; there's a very slim possibility that the beveled edges on the columns were made from BSP brushes due to their complexity and the pipes are duplicated everywhere, which usually indicates that they are something a bit more manageable to do so- static mesh.

Somebody should make some kind of appealing chart comparing the two, it would be very useful for explaining this. I sure know the first time that I was introduced to this concept (back in the UT2K4 days) I didn't really understand the difference either.

[cmf0106]

Thanks DSalimander,

If the BSP is for very basic geometry is it usually just reserved for rooms the basic layout of rooms then?

[DSalimander]

If the BSP is for very basic geometry is it usually just reserved for rooms the basic layout of rooms then?

Precisely.