Clothing LOD & The Impostors!

[Frawmusl]

I have mostly worked with inorganic and stationary things in mesh, but those don't have imposters that make them 2d at a distance so I usually make all levels of LOD for them. Now with clothing different LOD may never be seen with Imposters (Which most users leave enabled) 
SO I am thinking, Shirts/pants/dresses I will do the High and medium and maybe even low, but imposters will take care of the lowest? And then Shoes I would need to do all LOD since imposters won't kick in before they see that lowest level? 
Opinons on this?

[Cerise Sorbet]

This works if you are in a busy place that exceeds your maximum avatars setting. If the nearest avatars are not so close, then impostering won't happen. On the other hand, avatars are typically really small on screen by the time you get to the lowest LoD, so you can probably get away with a super simple token representation.

[Vegro Solari]

For clothes, you can usually get away with only optimizing the High and Medium LODs. The other two  can be ignored / staffed with a basic box or whatever.

In many cases you might actually gain a better visual look for the clothing if you set the High and Medium LODs to be the same exact mesh (that's at the cost of some LI of course, but since for clothes the LI is a lot less crucial/noticeable to user,  it's a useful shortcut to keep in mind.)

[Frawmusl]

True Cerise, I will go ahead and still do the LOD's as is, but might reduce the detail further than I might an object

 

Also Velgro, That is a terible way to make game models. Why would I want to render the medium the same as the highest? I do not need that detail to consume resources off my pc when I am not looking close up at it

 

Edit: Most designers think in LI, Which is a terrible way to base your creations off of (Personal opinion please put down your pitchforks), Its only good as a mediocre reference but there is so much more to creating people ignore with Sl's "Impact"

[Vegro Solari]

This is one of those things where in theory you'd think about it one way, but practice may demand something different entirely.

If what you are making are generic game models and you enjoy spending your life on perfecting manual optimization for these, all the power to you.

But if instead you're making SecondLife products, then the fact that you can eliminate the subconsciously jarring LOD popping effect from your prop or clothing piece (and some of them are so sized & positioned as to make them very vulnerable to it, oscillating between High and Med LODs for almost all of their onscreen life) is going to be the overriding consideration in your product awesomeness equation,  not the miniscule poly efficiency issues.