LOD-LOL: Doing it Wrong

[Alyona Su]

I won't name-and-shame anyone, including their brand. But I am seeing this consistently with this particular brand, and also seems to be prevalent among other specific "brands" along with a mish-mash of likewise all over the grid. Here is what it is supposed to look like:

But cam away only a few meters and it crumbles to bits (compare it to the other boats nearby):

Yes, yes, I know: "Set LOD to 4, you dim-wit!" Ummm, NO. I shouldn't have to adjust my setting just so your lazy work looks "normal" because, to me, the *default* is "normal" (and people complain about rezzing and frame-rate performance and things - go figure). There is a reason that there are multiple LODs when you upload your mesh, folks. Stop trying to cut the LI of your beasts by cheating with zero mid-LOD and zero low-LOD. Seriously? And you are charging L$4500+ for this stuff? I shop vehicles all the time. There is this set of tires that a lot of creators are using that turn to garbage at, ready for this?: 15 Meters!

I'm with the impression that too many creators are creating LOD-LOL.

This is one reason I never buy anything without a demo (not only how it looks, but also how it fits or drives, etc.) The sad thing is people forget to alt-cam *away* from the demo to see how well it holds up at a distance. I badly wanted to let one woman know, that I saw at a place, that she was Naked in a G-rated location. When I cammed into her the dress appeared. (!)

I didn't have the heart to tell her that she was stark-naked to everyone outside of 15 meters of her. 😕

So, I suppose this is a rant-post (not, rage-post - because I usually laugh when I see it) - I'm curious if I'm just unlucky and seeing these more often than others, or if it happens a lot and people just don't care... or...  

So, without being rude or anyone taking anything personally, what's your feedback on this apparently growing phenomenon (well, it seems that way to me, anyway)? I'm really curious what mesh-uploaders have to say.

 

Edited April 8, 2019 by Alyona Su

[Coffee Pancake]

This is what happens when a creator doesn't make the LOD meshes by hand.

Making LOD meshes is TRIVIAL if you have the skill to create the original object.

So is it lazyness .. or asset flippers with no modelling skills.

[animats]

16 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

This is what happens when a creator doesn't make the LOD meshes by hand.

Making LOD meshes is TRIVIAL if you have the skill to create the original object. 

No, it's not trivial. It's a lot of work. I've done it.

It would be easier if the requirement that the lower levels of detail use all the textures as the higher level was removed. The auto-generated low-LODs don't use all the textures, so that's not required by the host side.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

9 hours ago, animats said:

No, it's not trivial. It's a lot of work. I've done it.

It would be easier if the requirement that the lower levels of detail use all the textures as the higher level was removed. The auto-generated low-LODs don't use all the textures, so that's not required by the host side.

It is trivial, and being material-count compliant requires only a single triangle stuck somewhere per material. Don't move the goalposts.

[Richardus Raymaker]

LOD 4 is evil, but technical LOD 1.1 is evil to. The auto LOD can be fine. but i think the creator is using it wrong, LI is the enemy of problems like this. Most of the times i use LOD 2 as setting, but still test on default sl LOD

 

 

Edited April 9, 2019 by Richardus Raymaker

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

42 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

It is trivial, and being material-count compliant requires only a single triangle stuck somewhere per material. Don't move the goalposts.

Don't know whether it's trivial for you because you're so superior at all of this or if it has to do with what you make, but it's a real problem for me. And when I'm trying to get below 20 tris, every single one counts. It's really frustrating to have to waste any tri on something not even seen.

I don't see animats as moving goalposts but rather pointing out a significant problem for at least some of us.

[Alyona Su]

5 hours ago, Richardus Raymaker said:

LOD 4 is evil, but technical LOD 1.1 is evil to. The auto LOD can be fine. but i think the creator is using it wrong, LI is the enemy of problems like this. Most of the times i use LOD 2 as setting, but still test on default sl LOD

I have my viewer LOD at 2 (I believe) I use Catznip and I think that's the default for it  - that, or there are a lot of really good creators.

As to the "trivial" question: that term is not only a "loaded" one but also relative. For me: Photoshop is trivial to use. But I've been using it for years (and actually have a printed manual) - When was the last time anyone using photoshop for SL has used the Calculations feature, for exaple? (Rhetorical question).

[ChinRey]

16 hours ago, animats said:

No, it's not trivial. It's a lot of work. I've done it.

LIke so many skills, the more you do it, the easier it gets.

[Coffee Pancake]

8 hours ago, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

Don't know whether it's trivial for you because you're so superior at all of this or if it has to do with what you make, but it's a real problem for me. And when I'm trying to get below 20 tris, every single one counts. It's really frustrating to have to waste any tri on something not even seen.

I don't see animats as moving goalposts but rather pointing out a significant problem for at least some of us.

A few simple tips that really help.

Have sensible Li goals. Don't randomly pull a number out of the air and aim for that. Don't go for 1Li or bust. If your thing is good, no one will really care, and no one has any real idea of how much Li anything "should" be anyway. Aim to sell the thing, not it's Li count.

Your model shouldn't be solid, it's not being 3d printed, it's just floating triangles with textures. Think paper-craft/popup-book rather than lego.

As you make the higher LODs scale the model on screen to roughly the size you expect that LOD to be visible, triangles that represent detail 1 pixel or less are first for the chopping block. (you can work this out by uploading a simple test cube model of about the same size as the objects bounding box)

Perceived detail vs actual. No one will be looking closely at your 14 triangles off in the distance, the goal should just be to get a rough outline, to fill the space with no harsh lines.

Don't model what can't be seen. So depending on context you could omit the lowest LOD. eg If your object is for indoor use, LOD3 wont be seen. Skip!

Fake it. Don't use geometry when a texture will do. Eg, you have some complex detail (like a fence, or ladder), at LOD 0 & 1 you need geometry for the individual parts. for 2 & 3, add a tiny picture of the thing taken at LOD0 to the corner of one of your uv maps and replace the whole mess with 2 triangles & a picture. However ...... 

SL is terrible .. work with that. SL loads objects lowest to highest LOD, and starts to load textures in the same way. There is a very high chance that your object at LOD3 (or 2) will just be a grey un-textured shape anyway. So, add a sub model that you just tint in SL to match the average for your whole model. you can then aggressively remove all other detail faces and popup this 'solid color box' for LOD 2 & 3.

Smooth transitions between 0 and 1 matter as the thing will be right in front of the user. 1 -> 2 and 2 -> 3 progressively less so. Don't fret a less than perfect drop in detail the further out you get.

Make your LODs angle dependent. Assume that your end user will be looking at your object from a limited range of camera positions (eg, at the sides), aggressively cull from sides that wont be seen under that ideal, especially for LOD 2&3

 

 

Edited April 9, 2019 by CoffeeDujour

[Fionalein]

20 hours ago, Alyona Su said:

I shop vehicles all the time. There is this set of tires that a lot of creators are using that turn to garbage at, ready for this?: 15 Meters!

I hear you, I found a small Japanese creator though who does neat tuning tires - most of your affected vehicles will be ACS scripted - if your vehicle is ACS and mod you can transplant the 4 diffrent wheel scripts into better ones and replace those wheels... ACS is pretty idiot proof on that one, even different original orientation of the wheel mesh seems to be taken care of...

Edited April 9, 2019 by Fionalein

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

14 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

A few simple tips that really help.

Have sensible Li goals. Don't randomly pull a number out of the air and aim for that. Don't go for 1Li or bust. If your thing is good, no one will really care, and no one has any real idea of how much Li anything "should" be anyway. Aim to sell the thing, not it's Li count.

Why do you think I do that?

I sell to two groups and pretty much two groups only - art collectors and role players. Art collectors appreciate lower LI, but it's not a deal-breaker. RPers furnishing their rented home on the RP sim tend to be VERY LI conscious. If I can get something in for 1 LI, it will do better.

Any numbers I'm working towards aren't pulled out of the air. They're what I need to get a piece down to 1 LI.

15 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Don't model what can't be seen.

Which is why having to ADD in triangles to carry textures is frustrating, at least for some of us and dependent on what we're making. It's literally modeling what can't be seen. You didn't like it when animats or I expressed this, said it was trivial. Yet here you are, expressing other cases for the very same idea. Depending on the scale of the piece, those extra have-to-be-hidden tris matter.

15 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

you have some complex detail (like a fence, or ladder),

I have yet to make anything that big in mesh. Scale matters and affects LoDs differently. Perhaps that's why I have a different experience of working with LoDs than you do.

15 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Make your LODs angle dependent. Assume that your end user will be looking at your object from a limited range of camera positions (eg, at the sides), aggressively cull from sides that wont be seen under that ideal, especially for LOD 2&3

Already do that. I was dead chuffed the day I figured out that trick

I'm not inexperienced or stupid, you know. When I write that I find it tricky to make good LoDs which don't break down visually, I'm writing based on a hell of a lot of research, reading and experimenting. It does sound like I'm working with some different concerns and parameters than you. Could you please possibly listen to them or am I just wasting my time in talking with you? I know you're always going to be patronising, but could you give the rest of us SOME credit please?

 

[Fionalein]

36 minutes ago, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

RPers furnishing their rented home on the RP sim tend to be VERY LI conscious. If I can get something in for 1 LI, it will do better.

And that is why most RP places lok the way they do

 

[Coffee Pancake]

On 4/10/2019 at 4:17 AM, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

I sell to two groups and pretty much two groups only - art collectors and role players. Art collectors appreciate lower LI, but it's not a deal-breaker. RPers furnishing their rented home on the RP sim tend to be VERY LI conscious. If I can get something in for 1 LI, it will do better.

Any numbers I'm working towards aren't pulled out of the air. They're what I need to get a piece down to 1 LI.

If you compete on numbers, then you're going to win and loose on the numbers alone. Any actual skill be dammed when someone can flip an asset from skyrim, be hyper aggressive with the decomposition and win every single time by not only hitting the magical 1Li, but also on price because they exerted zero time and effort.

There is plenty of room for quality and while people say every Li matters, they will then go and buy the things that look the part. We're all walking around in onion skinned mesh bodies because that brief negative feeling over the weight is quashed by it being pretty. This applied to rezzed items too. Don't underestimate the lengths people will go to justify something because they like it.

On 4/10/2019 at 4:17 AM, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

..... but could you give the rest of us SOME credit please?

You aren't the only person in this thread and what one might find patronizing another of a differing skill level might find insightful.

[Pamela Galli]

Lately I have found that my usual setting of 2 does not prevent the collapsing of things that looked fine in the past. Some move by LL I assume. I remember them announcing they planned to do it but have forgotten what “it” was and why they wanted to make things look worse. 

[Alyona Su]

54 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

If you compete on numbers, then you're going to win and loose on the numbers alone. Any actual skill be dammed when someone can flip an asset from skyrim, be hyper aggressive with the decomposition and win every single time by not only hitting the magical 1Li, but also on price because they exerted zero time and effort.

There is plenty of room for quality and while people say every Li matters, they will then go and buy the things that look the part. We're all walking around in onion skinned mesh bodies because that brief negative feeling over the weight is quashed by it being pretty. This applied to rezzed items too. Don't underestimate the lengths people will go to justify something because they like it.

You aren't the only person in this thread and what one might find patronizing another of a differing skill level might find insightful.

I agree here. Personally, I'll buy a 5-Prim (*prim*) chair over a 1LI Mesh if it looks as good and the quality is there. Because with prims there is no LOD issue (and their geometry rezzes faster). The same is true when buying anything mesh - As long as the quality level is in sync with a fair price and required LI score (for me, obviously) then I'll buy it. Surely LI is a consideration, but it's only one part of the evaluation for me and, I'll presume, most other people.

34 minutes ago, Pamela Galli said:

Lately I have found that my usual setting of 2 does not prevent the collapsing of things that looked fine in the past. Some move by LL I assume. I remember them announcing they planned to do it but have forgotten what “it” was and why they wanted to make things look worse. 

Then you can turn your LOD up to 4 and everything will look great to you. But if you happen to buy clothing from the creator in the example I mentioned before then you will literally be wearing the "Emporer's New Clothes". I say to anyone and everyone who ever whines or complains about performance: You have to choose a priority: visual quality versus performance because you *often* cannot have both. For myself: I vote performance. Though I am fortunate enough to have found a magic mix of computer, Internet connectivity, and viewer choice and settings that I pretty much get both, albeit with some sacrifices. My LOD level at 2 is one of those.

Edited April 11, 2019 by Alyona Su

[Pamela Galli]

Ii think the LL plan was to make the weighting of the two lowest LODs less. I don't know if they have done that or not, but something seems to have changed. And I will not be redoing four regions of products YET AGAIN (prims> sculpts> mesh). 

 

[arton Rotaru]

2 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

Ii think the LL plan was to make the weighting of the two lowest LODs less. I don't know if they have done that or not, but something seems to have changed. And I will not be redoing four regions of products YET AGAIN (prims> sculpts> mesh). 

The LL plan is called Project ArcTan. It's new land impact accounting. But it hasn't been done yet. I haven't noticed any change in LOD switch behavior myself. I would guess it's one of your viewers setting that has changed maybe. In the past, when changing the zoom level by hitting Ctrl+0, objects switched to lower LODs quite early. But that has been changed recently. Maybe your viewer isn't up to date yet, and has the old behavior still. Or maybe you have just increase your draw distance, being able to move the camera further away?

Edited April 11, 2019 by arton Rotaru

[Pamela Galli]

Thanks, I do have a rather old Firestorm. I wait to update until something breaks, I guess it is time.

[arton Rotaru]

1 minute ago, Pamela Galli said:

Thanks, I do have a rather old Firestorm. I wait to update until something breaks, I guess it is time.

Try Ctrl+9 to reset the zoom level, maybe it was just that?

[Pamela Galli]

17 hours ago, arton Rotaru said:

Try Ctrl+9 to reset the zoom level, maybe it was just that?

I don't even know what a zoom level is but it seems to have worked. At LOD level 2, things look normal again -- thanks!