LODs tips & tricks or pure drudgery?

Mark Dygert

I thought it might be handy to discuss Levels of Detail, how to create them and what are some tips and tricks everyone's discovered. I'm mostly thinking about static triangulated props but I'm sure people have tips for characters as well.

So far here's what I've come up with.
- Optimize (reduce in maya?) is pretty crap unless you're working in tris.
- ProOptimize (was polycruncher) is a pimped out version and actually preserves UV's and does a good job at crunching tris.
- I haven't found a tool (outside of hand optimization) that works on polys...
- Having "PerserveUV's" in Edit Poly is pretty nice if you've already unwrapped something. It doesn't take care of everything, like cuts but works pretty well.
- Manually removing loops while holding ALT.

I'm sure there's more?

MoP

Collapse is my favourite tool when it comes to hand-optimising stuff.
Meshlab does a pretty good job for free too, especially for solid non-deforming models. You can make it preserve based on UV boundaries, and it tends to do a better job than Maya's built-in Reduce or Max's Optimize (both of which are horrible and essentially useless for decent pre-made in-game LODs).

hyrumark

For mostly quad models, a combination of removing edge loops, and collapsing edge rings goes pretty quickly, as long as you leave the UV borders intact.

For the farthest LOD on characters, I can sometimes get away with the Multires modifier, and the skin modifier does an amazing job of preserving the skinning, even on bad topology. For a little better quality, I'll export the model to Meshlab, then bring it back into Max and SkinWrap it to the original model. The great thing about Meshlab is you can drag a selection window around the areas you want optimized, which is great if you find it's destroying too much facial detail for example.

Rob Galanakis

We had a similar thread at tech-artists.org: http://tech-artists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=239

To my suprise, lots of studios are hand-making them still (or outsourcing it). We don't have a solution for SWTOR yet, but we're just starting research- we're going to find a pretty automated solution (some 'archetype' character assets will use hand-made at the first LoD probably). I refuse this day and age to have to make LoD's by hand, especially for a game with lots of content... thousands and thousands of assets. If I had more than ideas at this point I'd share, but while optimization is a passion I haven't had much time to explore my ideas yet, so I can't say with any real authority.

Tumerboy

I still mostly do it by hand. Though most of the stuff in an MMO is already low poly by game standards, so it's a little easier to deal with by hand.

Tulkamir

I tend to do em by hand as well, using collapse and remove edge loop and it goes fairly quickly. Though I have to agree with Rob that it seems like there should be a better, more automated way to do this.

butt_sahib

Polytools really speeds up the process.
There is this command where you can select an edge, and it automatically terminates that edge and the vertices involved.

sprunghunt

butt_sahib wrote: »

Polytools really speeds up the process.
There is this command where you can select an edge, and it automatically terminates that edge and the vertices involved.

In max 9 and up if you hold down Ctrl and select 'remove' it'll take both the verts and the edges.

It's in the "what's different between 9 and 8" document.

cman2k

it gets better than that.

just select an edge or loop of edges and ctrl+backspace to remove both the verts and edges....one of my favorite tricks when creating hand-made LODs.

also useful is setting your own shortcuts for selecting edge loops and rings.

using preserve UVs and what not it can be very quick to just eyeball what edges you can lose, select them and remove them using these few simple tricks.

Blaizer

All by hand too, optimizers don't do things like i want. Collapse, remove, etc.

The Triangle is the KING in a low poly model

fr0gg1e

Like Mop, collapse is my best friend. Along with selection convertions (IE polys to edges or edges to verts, etc.).
What I often use is polyboost's dotloop / dotring selection with gap of 1 or 2 depending on the model and topology, then edge ring (or grow ring / grow loop if it is a small part of the model that I want to optimize) and collapse. this way one edge on 2 get collapsed on a whole model or on a particular area.

Farfarer

Yeah, collapse and pulling edgeloops out is the way I tend to go. Seneca's unbevel script is really good for it, too - stops volume being lost when you collapse bevels out.

Auto stuff only really serves to screw over anything you intended

Justin Meisse

yeah, by hand, I made ctrl+c my collapse hotkey, so I mainly do a bunch of collapsing edge rings and deleting edge loops, etc.... but I do low poly enviro stuff so it's no biggee and automated stuff tends to make a mess.