Making and Uploading LODs

[Solaris Neiro]

Hi everyone! I could really use some help. I've been all over google and the forums for some help, but can't find any thing that tells me what's wrong with my mesh.

 

I made this shoulder jewelry piece. It's a lot of tris >.<. there really is no way to get it down without it looking kind of weird honestly.  Anywho, when I try to upload it, it's 250 LI (The download is the highest) and it costs around $260 to upload. I tried making my own LODs but when I do, they become very distorted and very large in the preview window as well as in world. 

 

I really wanted to upload a small cube for the lowest LOD which drastically takes my LI to 8. Unfortunately, it gets ridiculously huge when you zoom out far enough. I also get an error saying different number of texturable faces. I did read somewhere that this is a bug that's still being fixed.  I just don't know what to do so this can work properly. I would appreciate any help. Thank you!

[Drongle McMahon]

1. What is the authoring program?

2. How many triangles, in the original, and in the uploader display?

3. Is it one or multiple objects?

4. How many materials? (must be the same in all LODs)/

5. A picture isworth 1000 words.

Meanwhile, check the bounding boxes. Maybe you accidentally included something in the high LOD that wasn't supposed to be there? The low LODs get stretched to fit the high LOD bounding box(es).

[Solaris Neiro]

Hi Drongle, thanks for responding

 

1. Made in Blender

2. I know it's very large, I'm working on cutting it down, but it's a pretty detailed piece: Tris in Blender: 30,776. in the uploader its the same

3. It's one object: I made them separately and joined them in blender and uploaded as one.

4. I used 5 Materials, and the LODs have the same, in blender they are also the same name etc.

5. Here is my original upload, no messing around with any buttons etc: http://gyazo.com/d88d5b664d3d9c69232d1b196e84890a and this is one of my LODs I tried to make (I used decimation just to test it out), but I also hand removed edges etc on a different LoD, yet I still got the same distortion and enlargement http://gyazo.com/7b67275984540c847de4f7fcacc69ae4 (The preview was not changed in anyway, it's significantly bigger than my original.  

 

I made sure the model was the only thing I was uploading, I also tried to upload a small box for my lowest LOD, but that was not working, it was also enlarged and distorted.... being new, I am not even sure if that's good practice. I appreciate your help! 

[Drongle McMahon]

Yes. You should try to reduce the triangles, for performance/lag reasons. However the LI has no effect when the object is attached to the avatar.

It is evedent from your first picture that the automatic LOD function fails to reduce the mesh after the first step, although the triangle limits should make it do so. This is almost ceretianly due to an unexplained problem with the algorithm that happens with mesh that include toroidal geometry, as in the case of links in a chain. There was a recent thread discussing this effect which also pointed to a much earlier discussion. One solution that seemed to work was to make sure the toruses had at least one split edge. It also appeared to happen only when the mesh had no UV map, or maps collapsed to a point (that can happen when you combine objects that have UV maps with different names).

In you second picture, it appears that your medium LOD file has different materials than the high LOD. That isn't allowed. Make sure that exactly the same materials (it's the names that matter, but that will ensure they match) are applied to each LOD model, and that each has all of them. You are on the right track though. You can make MUCH better LOD meshes by doing them by hand instead of relying on the automatic generation, even when that works. Remember that at the distances that show anything less that the high LOD, the links in your chains will be too small to see anyway. So there is no point in them being there; they only wastes resources.