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LOD - better to do it manually or let the engine do it?

by Alfred Norris · in Torque Game Engine · 06/22/2005 (3:16 pm) · 6 replies

We're having a debate in our dev forums over whether we should let the engine do the LOD reduction or do multiple versions of textures/models ourselves.

First of all, I havent read up on whether there is a way to do it manually. Or conversely, whether it can be turned off inside the code.

Second of all, if the obvious upside of letting the engine do it is less work...what is the downside? Poorer quality than if the reduced LOD was custom designed?

Let me know what y'all think.

Alfred Norris
CONFLICT: Omega
A Post-Apocalyptic MMO
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Torque 3D Owner Hokuto
#1
06/22/2005 (3:30 pm)
I remember reading an article pushing the idea that LOD is a thing of the past as today powerful graphic cards don't really benefit from it.

Actually the writer ( I think it was an article on Gamasutra) was making a point of saying that an LOD system would actually slow things down due to the requirement of having to sort and display different version of the same model instead keeping displaying the same one no matter how far the model is from the camera

Plus with Normal Mapping (and similar tricks), you don't need a top high poly count model in-game anymore....

Well, just some different point of view.

Also if your target market is not the one with the latest hardware..... LOD would still be a good thing to apply

Torque Owner David Tiernan
#2
06/22/2005 (3:30 pm)
As far as I am aware the only LOD support the engine has is you create it yourself within the model and texture. All the models I have created with LOD I did this way.

Torque Owner Mike Kuklinski
#3
06/22/2005 (3:34 pm)
AFAIK TGE/SE will not automatically generate LOD meshes.

Torque Owner Very Interactive Person
#4
06/22/2005 (3:38 pm)
There is a way to do it automatically, but really, manually it can look so much better, becuase you have complete control on how it'll look. The automated LOD almost always have screwed up UVW's, or remove vertices that shouldn't be removed.
And about LOD not helping. For a couple of models on screen that is true. But with 30-60 models on screen, LOD can really speed up your game a lot.

Torque Owner Alfred Norris
#5
06/22/2005 (3:50 pm)
Seeing as how there could be 200 people on screen, LOD is our friend.
Thanks for the info.

Alfred Norris
CONFLICT: Omega
A Post-Apocalyptic MMO

Torque Owner Jeff Gran
#6
06/22/2005 (4:00 pm)
TGE does not auto-generate LOD models. The 3DS Max exporter can do it at export time, using the MultiRes modifier. But as mentioned above, the results are not very good. Basically it comes down to a matter of time. If you have the time to make custom LOD meshes, the results will be much better.