LODs tips & tricks or pure drudgery?
mod
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?
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?
Replies
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Triangle is the KING in a low poly model
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.
Auto stuff only really serves to screw over anything you intended