Converting Scatter Instances or Procedural Meshes
In general, our Scatter tools create HISM instances (same as UE foliage or UE PCG) and tools such as The Terrain or Road Tool create procedural meshes.
Scatter Tools (Surface Scatter, Grid Scatter, Physics, etc.):
You don't need to convert them or break the link towards the tool, but if you move the meshes you have scattered upon the performance will of course be better if the tool link is broken. So here are some options that are useful in different scenarios:
1. From within the Scatter Tool in question, open the menu and click Delete, that will will delete the tool and thus break the connection so you can't edit the result anymore with our tool. But the result will of course exist in the environment. The result is still an HISM. This connection would also be broken if you delete the original mesh you are scattering, or for example, the spline you have used in a Path Scatter.
2. Merge Actors: This will also break the tool connection so you can't modify the settings afterward. And this is more useful if you have scattered stuff with Physics rather than a tool such as Surface Scatter. Here it goes from HISM to one Static Mesh, or from several Static Meshes to one Static Mesh.
3. Convert to Foliage: It breaks the tool connection and gives you the ability to use the normal foliage tool in UE to paint delete/add on the result to further customize it. The result is still a HISM but, it will respect World partitioning which could be very good in certain scenarios. And another bonus is that you can replace the scattered objects with blueprints if you want. So if you know you are 100% certain you don't need to adjust the settings in Surface Scatter any more, doing this conversion is recommended.
Procedural Meshes/Tools (Terrain tool, Road Tool, etc):
1. Procedural to Static Mesh: Procedural meshes are in general heavy and not very good, so once you know for certain that you are satisfied with the settings in the tool, you should convert it to a static mesh to get the best possible performance.
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