Efficient way to make LODs ?

CyberGameArts

Hello everybody!
I am supposed to make LODs for guns and some environment objects. Now my question is if there is an efficient way in doing that other than completly reducing the poly/ vert count and re-unwrapping/ baking it. I believe there is a way to transfer texture information aswell, but I am not 100% sure about that, or would I have to retexture the LOD too .
Anyways thanks alot in advance

Tom3dJay

If you're using the max you can always tick the "preserve UVs"

When doing lods, have your texture applied to see the changes on the model when welding vertexes.

Sometimes having "preserve UVs" unticked works better, you gotta decide on the go.

I don't think there's a need for rebaking anything, you would then need different texture sets for different LODs, which would be inefficient.

odium

The thing to remember about lods is simple... Don't get caught up with them. They are REALLY simple things at the end of the day. Oh, no, shit, the uv islands wont match... Oh wait, the normals will be wrong... Oh christ, theres stretching!!!

Doesn't matter.

Remember that LODs are, most of the time anyway, simple versions of the mesh that will be seen from a distance, thats why they have much less detail. So yeah, its perfectly ok to just be cheap, preserve the UV's and pro optimize the mesh... You're not looking for clean lines and detail after all, you're looking for a cheaper version of the mesh that really does matter.

Rebaking and all that jazz, it defeats the point of a LOD model.

WarrenM

LODs are expensive enough (each one is a unique mesh, eating memory, etc) without baking custom maps for them and such. Do like Odium says.

Elyaradine

Unless you're working on a mobile game or something, where you're trying to support older devices by forcing the device to use LODs step or two down. Then you kind of need LODs that look okayish, as opposed to the crappy ones that appear tiny on screen.

If it's that kind, imo you kind of need to do it manually to keep as good a fidelity as you can, because it might be all that someone sees on a crappy device.

CyberGameArts

Thanks for the advice everyone you all helped alot!

JacqueChoi

If you want to properly do LODs, it's generally a good idea to know this BEFORE you make the main model.

This gives you a better idea on where to put your UV seams.

Also, when using LOD's its usually a better idea to force right angles into your UVs.

D4V1DC

Ah this is all good to know, I never had to make lod's only when I worked on the Dota2 stuff I was a bit concerned, this thread makes me feel better that i did it the right way after all.
Thanks for the info, just echoing that applying the textures to the models then creating lod's helps a lot to see what distortion you'll get on your 'edited' lods, I manually just collapsed areas to retain the silhouette as much as I could.

Good thread.

poopipe

JacqueChoi wrote: »

If you want to properly do LODs, it's generally a good idea to know this BEFORE you make the main model.

This gives you a better idea on where to put your UV seams.

Amen

It really pays to plan your UVs around the LOD mesh rather than the full res version.