Yes, it is getting to the point in game design where learning Max/Maya is a definite plus.
Being able to create whatever meshes you require is a real benefit.
Maya PLE (Personal Learning Edition) is totally free and fully supported by Epic.
Maya PLE can be downloaded from Autodesk's website. The Plugins can be downloaded from UDN. Note that the last Epic PLE Plugin is for version 7.x, while Autodesk has 8.5 (?) online, meaning you require a copy of 7.x.
Anyway...
The consequences vary by what you are converting to/from and which direction, and vary from minimal impact to major impact, usually in the areas of rendering speed and collision, loss of instancing, but also smoothing support and object lighting if CSG is involved, etc.
However...
In your case, if you
must decrease Editor object counts due to slowdown in editing, personally I would look at only combining windows on each side of the buildings. And if the window layout can support it, use the one combined mesh version to replace the others on the alternate sides or the similar buildings (in other words, if the windows are 2x2 layout, and all are the same layout and spacing on all four sides of the building, make one combined version and duplicate that around the alternate sides, deleting those individual windows and replacing it with the 2x2 set).
Especially if the buildings are CSG walls, are zoned, or contain cube block Antiportals (dummy facade/shell buildings), etc.
Simply because if a player is standing on the south side, chances are none of the windows on the other three sides are necessarily rendering (you can check this). But if you combine all windows all the way around, they will all always render when even one is in view.
It sounds like you are running into Zone issues then.
In this case, I wouldn't just throw away portions of the map, I would selectively decide which areas can best benifit from the use of zones.
Zones essentially provide optimization through culling those areas out of the rendering if none of the ZonePortals are in view.
In most cases, for maps such as RO style, the zones will be on individual buildings. Or if the map is outlined with faced buildings around the edges, the zones may be for each room facing the play area.
Are any ZonePortals always directly stacked in view with a ZonePortal on the other side(s) of the room/building? These can be a waste of a zone as it may always render (you always see through it).
Are your buildings full 3D and do they have interiors (versus facades or shells)?
Which interiors have the most detail and staticmeshes inside of them?
Can you replace some Zoning optimization simply with AntiPortals?
So choose which areas of the map will benefit most from zones.
- If your buildings are full 3D with interiors, zone those which have the most detail inside of them, as this is the most benefit.
Empty rooms benefit less than rooms full of meshes and detail.
- If there are multiple rooms in each building, and you are zoning the rooms individually, simply combine some of the adjacent rooms into just one zone (remove the ZonePortal between them).
You may have a rendering speed penalty when these rooms are viewed from certain directions, but at least you fix the max-out zone limit.
- If any buildings are simply cube shells or facades or have no detail inside of the rooms, you may be able to use AntiPortals in the walls instead of zoning.
Just be sure that the AntiPortal cube protrudes down below the building CSG into subtractive space or it won't work.
You usually don't want the AP in the visible rendering view, so don't have it behind open windows or you may see a HOM or black space. It should be embedded in solid CSG or under terrain, where it cannot be seen.
Other than this, I would have to see the map.
Hope it helps...
