Weird mesh deformation while uploading custom LOD

[Tagar1k]

So I've just created my mesh and wanted to check the preview in "Upload model" tab.

Unfortunately, my tire mesh gets distorted in lower LOD like this https://prnt.sc/uk7foi

I've tried to mess with the settings or making changes to the meshes but without any success.

Has anybody met with this issue before?

[Tagar1k]

Oh, and this is how it's supposed to look like: https://prnt.sc/uk7mvc

[ChinRey]

31 minutes ago, Tagar1k said:

I've tried to mess with the settings or making changes to the meshes but without any success.

Try to triangulate the mesh before uploading.

[Tagar1k]

20 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Try to triangulate the mesh before uploading.

Receiving the exact same result as above. That didn't help at all

[arton Rotaru]

Is this one object, or is it multiple objects?

[Tagar1k]

6 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

Is this one object, or is it multiple objects?

Those are two objects (rim and tire are separate)

[arton Rotaru]

1 minute ago, Tagar1k said:

Those are two objects (rim and tire are separate)

I suspected that. Then you need to follow a specific naming convention for your LoD meshes. Otherwise the uploader mixes up the meshes, and the tire will be assigned to the rim and vice versa. SL naming convention.

But, I would recommend to upload such a wheel as one mesh only. If you want to animate the wheel on a vehicle, it's much easier when all the spinning parts are just one mesh.

Also make sure you apply Rotation & Scale (Reset XForms, Freeze Trasformations etc.) to your LoD meshes as well.

 

[Aquila Kytori]

As Arton has already mentioned, wheels are usually uploaded as a single object.

Each object can have up to 8 materials assigned to it but can have only 1 UV map.

The UV's of each material can be all on one "layer" within the 0 to 1 UV space or if you need more pixel real estate for each material then each material can be stacked one above the other in "layers".

Note that each LoD model must contain the same list of materials.

 

You should be aiming for a LI  (Land Impact) cost of between 1 and 2 for each wheel. To achieve this, as in my previous example .........

....... the High and Medium LoD models (and perhaps the Low LoD as well but you need to test) can be quite high poly but the Low and especially the Lowest LoD model need to be very low poly.

This is often done by placing an image(s) of the object on the flat surface(s) of the low poly model. usually referred to as an Imposter or Billboard.

In the example wheel below you can see the Imposter images ( 2 versions, Black and Chrome, so that there can be 2 different versions of the wheel using the same 512² texture) incorporated in the wheel texture and how the side triangles of the low poly model are mapped to them.

This may seem a bit crude to you but it works quite well enough.  In this particular case the Imposter images were created by taking screen shots of the wheels inworld and pasting them into the texture. Other times it may be better to render out images with transparent backgrounds in Blender.

These wheels have an LI of 1.1

As all LoD models must contain the same list of materials an extra triangle was added to the high poly version and assigned the same material as was used on the low poly model. The Low poly model contains two extra triangles, one for each of the materials used in the High poly model.

 

Of course not all wheels are created this way but I mention the above so that you can  have more options.