LOD and Retaining Mesh Quality

[Carpentoon]

If I were to set the LOD on each levels to the highest LOD, would my mesh break or become distorted as my camera moves back or my character leaves a certain area? How do I create a model that keep the LOD of the highest always so the product I create is always quality in appearance?

[Rowan Amore]

Could.check.this section.  There's a few threads concerning LOD...

https://community.secondlife.com/forums/forum/303-mesh/

[Carpentoon]

38 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Could.check.this section.  There's a few threads concerning LOD...

https://community.secondlife.com/forums/forum/303-mesh/

Thanks, Rowan :)!

[Carpentoon]

I did check out some posts on the shared link, but figured I may get a direct answer for this specific question. Retaining quality details is important for any products I make for clients :). I want to make sure I am always offering the best possible item. 

Edited September 26, 2023 by Carpentoon

[animats]

If you make all LODs the same as the highest LOD, your object will look great but the land impact will be higher.

As a rule of thumb, each LOD should have about half the triangle count of the next highest LOD.

The lowest LOD should never be forced below 20 triangles or so. Look at your objects in lowest LOD (set Firestorm's LOD factor to 0.0). If you can see through them, you're doing it wrong.

 

 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

If your goal is to prevent the model from "breaking down" at a distance, then setting each LOD to highest is basically the nuclear option. It'll work... at the cost of everything else.

To prevent the item from breaking down, all you need to do is create a custom LOD, which seriously doesn't take that long to do once your primary mesh is finished. Don't let the viewer automatically generate LODs for complex objects (especially inorganic stuff like furniture).

Blender's Decimate-modifier is often used as a quick way to reduce tris without breaking the model too much. Doing things by hand is sometimes necessary, if not even the fun part.

[Chic Aeon]

22 hours ago, Carpentoon said:

I did check out some posts on the shared link, but figured I may get a direct answer for this specific question. Retaining quality details is important for any products I make for clients :). I want to make sure I am always offering the best possible item. 

So the "best possible item" would NOT be something that had ALL the LODs set as the top level -- unless it was a cube LOL.  That isn't a hundred percent correct answer but let me explain a bit. 

IF you do that, not only will the land impact be very high it will also force the viewer to render ALL the triangles in that object from a far away distance -- a distance that in many cases is too far away from the object to SEE the individual triangles.  

I don't know what you make but here is an example.  This is a SINGLE mesh that is about half a meter by half a meter in size and one land impact. The top two levels are set at full so that even those on default Linden viewer will see the object as created Up to about 7 meters (a good size living room distance in real life).  The next level down is MUCH lower,  There is no way anyone could see the beads from 80 feet away.  Even folks on the Linden viewer can see this well at a large living room distance.   

 

 

When you get a long ways from an object there is NO REASON for all those triangles. 

 

That is what you see at 25 meters at LOD2 which is the majority of folks. Those using LOD 3 and LOD4 will see close to the same thing but with   their computer working harder. EDIT: that is they will ALWAYS see the item at its full triangle count no matter the distance (practical or impractical).    I personally don't agree with animats statement about never going below 20 on the lowest setting.  There may be times when it is important to see a furniture or décor item half way across the sim, but those times are rare.  

OBVIOUSLY how you choose to upload depends a lot on what you are making. A backdrop to be used for photos doesn't need great LODs but a building that will be used as a shop should have good distance LODs (my opinion).   

 

 

The most important thing I think is to be aware of what folks are seeing and TESTING TESTING TESTING.  If you have a very small item that needs to be seen from a fairly long distance (say a small vase) then using  a higher LOD setting on level 3 would make sense.  I have never found a need to have a high number in the bottom setting.    There are other tricks you can use that work better -- AND a good rule is to keep your original model as simple as it can be and still get the job done. Use textures for some of the detail etc.  

In my opinion the worst thing a creator can do is have their viewer set at LOD4 and not testing at other settings to see what the majority of folks will see.   

 

Edited September 26, 2023 by Chic Aeon
adding info

[animats]

3 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

I personally don't agree with animats statement about never going below 20 on the lowest setting. 

My point is that below some value, the rendering load doesn't decrease, because the overhead of setting up the mesh dominates the draw time. The LI computation does not fully reflect this, though. I think Beq Janus did some tests on this.