>>392333286
>>392333729
By "shader settings" you probably mean texture and material. They'll stay the same, and the mesh you combined will just get two material slots (if they were two meshes with one material each). Further option for optimization includes taking those two materials and combining them by atlasing the texture to reduce the material count.
>>392344046
If you take the phybone radii and have them increase along the length, you can reduce the gaps between them and there's a less chance of your legs clipping out in between the bones.