Distance lod's Pro's and Con's

[+RAVEN]

Pro's

1) increased FPS.

2) ?

 

Con's

1) Making them sucks!

Edited July 15, 2013 by RAVEN

[+ravenclaw_007]

actually to make them is quite easy 

[+RAVEN]

I must be doing it the hard way then? 003 ,4 5 are not too bad, it's the 002 that gives me headaches ..

[Centurion-1]

Speaking of which, does anyone have any good workflows to share for making LODs?

[+76.IAP-Blackbird]

Im reducing the vertices, simply by selecting the right ones and delete them from the mesh, the mapping will not be disturbed and oyu can save nearly 33% of the actual polycount and more if you do it right :D

[+RAVEN]

I think the way I'm mapping won't let me do that, but I write down the gizmo XYZ and remap of the reduced mesh is very easy. You just gave me an idea I'll have to try.

Edited July 15, 2013 by RAVEN

[+76.IAP-Blackbird]

It doesnt matter how you map, you can "remove" the vertices not "delete" sorry, deleting will cause damaging the mapping, but remove seems to work different.

[+russouk2004]

I rarely do distance lods but should do...Ive started some and delete internal stuff like intakes,wheel wells cockpit and make all other meshes double sided so you cant see thru insides...and convrt high poly objects to optimize them to lower poly\vertice counts.

[+Crusader]

Some posts by TK on TW forum regarding  lods , mostly replies to questions from modders:

 

Link 1

 

Link 2

 

Link 3

 

Link 4

 

Link 5

 

Link 6

 

[+RAVEN]

Well I read all the links and some of it I learned from the editing.pdf I have. I think I understand the trade off in memory better now , Thanks

Of course now I will have to go over all the Hurricanes and fix the Ailerons glitch .And I think I'll keep the mapping because of the shader info I read for the July 13 Hotfix

[+Stary]

maybe use "optimize" function? I don't recall me doing any of those though

[+RAVEN]

I'll have to try that Stary. The - n is finished, I swapped parts ( meshes) from the -E and -F to make the -K's using 'Merge' instead of inport and it works real good , then did the same thing with all the distance lod's. For the N cockpit I made a copie of the N master file, pulled the textures off the parts I needed then merged them into a copie of the E pit , All I need now is a new ins. panel , the gauges are just moved around. ETA on the N pit' two weeks.:)

[+gerwin]

maybe use "optimize" function? I don't recall me doing any of those though

In the 3DSMAX 8 this function sucks AFAIK. saves little, just merges some faces that are better left seperate.

 

I haven't found an easy way for low detail lods in the little time I was modelling vehicles, just two things

- remove small details when they are removable

- for the main elements I tried to build a similar shape with less vertices.

Then combine the above two things to make about 3  to 4 variants. And test in game how close you can get

the transitions between them without making it noticable.

 

I find distance lods necessary for my system. In particular for items that can appear in the dozen in a small area.

Also, The 1000m to 8000m distance range shows things just very tiny, why waste GPU power on a thing so far away.?

But if you have plenty GPU power, it ain't your problem. ;)

 

Still wonder what TK is thinking in regards to SF2NA, he broke his own standards there with most objects.

 

(Edit: 1000..8000 meters, not km)

Edited July 18, 2013 by gerwin

[+RAVEN]

Gerwin , that's what I do to make them and 'Optimize' sucks with Max9 also.

[+ravenclaw_007]

normaly i do reduce the vertex count with the " MultiRES " funktion ,i select the object and reduce by percentage the amount of vertex and if i´m not satisfy with the outcome i always can go back or try an other percentage

 

 

this is the sway brace of a new MER /TER and the vertex count is by 1108 for that object if i reduce the count by 50% the object is still acceptable and the vertex count is now reduced by half , you may have to check if your mapping has changed especialy by reducing above 30% but for a distance lod that would only matter for the No.2 lod , by further reducing the vertex count

you will get some distortion of the object what would be still ok for the very far distance lod´s (mapping would not be an issue here)

 

original with 100% vertex count

 

reduced by half

 

reduced to 15% and the object is distorted