Which is more efficient?

I was wondering, which idea is more efficient?

  1. Each mesh has its own material but the texture size is quite small
  2. Every mesh shares one material but the texture size is large and holds all the textures for every object

Also, if a mesh uses only a portion of a texture, does the whole texture get rendered or is it only part of the texture that the object uses? Thanks guys

Sharing textures is more efficient, since the more materials you have, the more draw calls during runtime. Texture Atlas’s help minimize draw calls by combining textures into one giant texture.