Custom LOD Help / Tips

[rik4000]

Hello all,

I was just wondering what process you guys go through when making a custom LOD?

I'm still in the custom LOD learning process so if anyone could bullet point the steps they take that would be extremely helpful to me.

Do you get the building under 100 polys or tris? I've found it very difficult to get under 100 tris


I have used custom LODs for all my buildings but didn't use a custom LOD texture, just used the auto generated one from the game and so far they don't look too bad. My latest building however is the reason i'm asking for tips as the detail change on this is so noticeable and it annoys me greatly >> http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=447232026

Thanks

 

[Shroomblaze]

I make a lod by making a 1x1 block. Then I will stretch the poly faces to fit the sides of the building/object. so that all sides should be the same width, length and height of whatever it is I'm working on. Then if it had certain angle I will add edges to the block and carve out the basic shape of the building. A lod should be super simple and basic looking. Then when I have a nice block shape of the building I will edit the uvwmap and use same texture image as the diffuse and just fill in the areas with the correct look. I personally have not needed to make a new lod diffuse texture as of yet. That's only because I haven't run into the issue of needing to.

For example on this car I'm working on right now. the front window is just a face with the window texture and from far away you can hardly notice it's just a single poly. Also for the wheel, nothing has to look exactly like it should. It's so far away you can get way with representations of what it is. Like on the wheels I just used the hubcap image because from far away all you really see is tiny dots anyways...

And I didn't even bother giving this thing side windows because I dont feel like making a separate texture part for it. The front window is good enough for me, the lod is just an icon of what the car is far from away.

This LOD is 68 Tris

What I would like to know though is why the hell my LOD right now is changing to a different variation color when I zoom out. I'm having trouble figuring out that problem at this very moment. It's frustrating me.

 

[Shroomblaze]

Ok So I'm really get mad with my lod right now. I'm trying to import this vehicle. It keeps turning yellow when I transition out far enough to trigger the lod. I literally removed any yellow images on the diffuse and lod textures. I set all the color variations to black and yet when I zoom out it is still turning yellow!

I do know about the issue where if you have polygons outside of the uvwmap space the game will pull random colors from other assets not even related to your own. But I checked for that and all my polys are in the uvwmap space. I hope someone can help me to understand why the hell it's doing this. Thanks

EDIT: Ok, so after messing around in the asset editor for 30 mins trying to figure out this damn lod color changing problem. I finally decided to save it and check it out in game anyways and guess what! It works just fine in game. So the asset editor must be buggy with that color variations or something. Just glad its working now.

 

[Shroomblaze]

Now I'm sure you would want to do a way nice lod for a building but these are tiny cars and I just don't care about spending the time to make it perfect.

Just to show you how crap a lod can be and still look fine in game IMO.

Here's the lod for the Taxi cab I uploaded... http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=446690518

 

[rik4000]

Thanks a lot for the reply. i managed to get my building down to 120 tris BUT...

I've just been experimenting with some LODs and i get the following error when i load into a city ( seems to work fine and get no errors in the asset editor)

Ive done as much as i can think of to try and fix it but im out of options, does anyone have any ideas? am i missing some steps?

i have the following files in the Import folder

Thanks again for your help so far.

 

[Shelltoe]

hm does your lod have a proper uv map? what happens if you remove your _lod_d

i usually create a very simple box model using the bounds of the detailed one.
then render front, back, top, right and left views of the detailed model to my _lod_d
finally uvmap the lod.

like this. detailed and lod next to each other. used some uv stacking on the lod.
3149 tris for the detailed / 149 tris for the lod
(i know the detailed is rather high. done shortly after release and wanted some challange... without the entrance part it's at 1200. probably won't redo it though)

OT:
as i noticed you dont use a _c map. which means colorvariations will be applied to your full building. if you dont want to use colorvariations at all create a black _c
colorvariations are rather bugged atm though ... so you might not even notice this while using a bugged template. i'm assuming this will be an ALDI store.

 

[rik4000]

Yes the lod has a 512 x 512 uv map.

If i remove the lod_d the asset works but looks pretty terrible when you zoom out (textures all over the shop).

It all looks good in the asset editor with the lod_d (exactly how i want it to look)

ill add in a c map and see if that helps things out.

Thanks for the help

 

[Shelltoe]

i don't think the c map will help solving the lod problem. haven't seen the error msg yet. ill try to reproduce it when im home.

 

[rik4000]

I can send you my files if you can't reproduce it.

I'm going to upload this asset now anyway but if i can sort the lod issue out then i can always update it at a later date. (it doesn't look too horrific but it still annoys the hell out of me)

 

[soldyne]

I have the same error message when trying to import LODs for park models. I think the error only occurs for buildings. did not have this issue before the patch. I am about to give up on creating new assets for this game since the game won't create a decent LOD for my models and I can't import my own LODs anymore without the error.

what really angers me about this is that my base model is under 100 triangles so you would think the game would be able to just use the base model without any changes, but, no, it just completely destroys the base model and it looks horrible on zoom out.

 

[Shroomblaze]

Here are some suggestions that I know about LODS

• All the texture sizes need to be the same size otherwise they will bug out.
• 512x512 lod textures seem rather large. You could probably go down to 256x256 or even 128x128. It all depends on the size of your object. a 512x512 texture may be valid for large skyscraper buildings. I have gone down to 64x64 lods textures for my cars because I don't need anything larger than that. To judge what would be good enough size for your model just zoom out until your model triggers the lod and see just how big your building is and what size texture you could get away with and still look perfectly fine.
• Another Issue with LODS as I've said earlier in this thread is that you must have all the UVW Mapping within the 1x1 or 1x2 texture map space. If any of your mapping lines leaves this space and are on the outside of the border of your texture space you will cause the game to bug out and grab colors/textures from random models not even related to your own and make your LOD do weird things.
• NEW one I just found out yesterday. In the asset editor I was using a color variation map and my model was black and when I zoomed out the lod would change color to one of the other color variations and it was really making me mad. I saved it anyways and checked it out in game and it worked just fine. So if you're getting frustrated with color changes in the asset editor just try saving and testing.
• LODS don't need to be overly complicated, Simple is good. A Lod is a symbol/icon to represent the object from a far. So It doesn't need to exactly look like the building/object pixel per pixel. As I've posted earlier in the thread some screen shots of my lod models, I just position the texture on certain areas of the texture map that represent certain areas. If you are perfectionist I could see you going in and making a brand new lod diffuse texture. Sometimes you can easily get away with cutting a corner or two if you know how to do it right.

As far as that error goes I have never gotten it yet, doesn't mean I wont though. Haven't attempted to do any building as of recently.
Maybe @CO_Dae could shed some light on that issue?

 

[soldyne]

Shroomblaze, thanks for tips, but, what we really need is for CO to acknowledge that something is screwy and at least take a look at it. All the evidence supports the conclusion that the last patch did something to building LOD generation. people in other threads have reported that importing models before the patch with LODs had no issues but importing the exact same model with the exact same files after the patch causes the errors being reported. Its the prop size bug all over again with a twist.

my guess is that when they altered the editor to allow for extra options and added in vehicles it broke something for the building importer; and I think the issue is only affecting buildings like parks. They probably did not test the building importer as extensively as they were concentrating on vehicles and tunnels.

BTW CO - Tunnels! Fantastic! I love 'em!

back on topic - This issue would not be such a big deal if we had a way of hex editing the fix like we did with the prop size bug. without a workaround many of us building makers are pretty much done with asset making for the time being and that makes me sad.

 

[Shelltoe]

+1
is the prop bug even fixed by now?
with the new patch there seems to be a bug using the ingame scale option which might be related too
just like colorvariations being pretty much useless ever since. sad.

 

[Shroomblaze]

I just released a Tutorial/Guide and during part of it I talk about LODS and show a video of me creating one. You can check it out now.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...a-model-into-game-ready-asset-3ds-max.857689/

 

[CO_Dae]

I've just been experimenting with some LODs and i get the following error when i load into a city ( seems to work fine and get no errors in the asset editor)

Ive done as much as i can think of to try and fix it but im out of options, does anyone have any ideas? am i missing some steps?

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, it indeed seems that the use case of manually replacing just the LOD diffuse texture has broken at some point. The problem is the game fails to create the other required textures in this case, so one workaround is to also provide neutral versions of the other LOD textures (or just e.g. normal and alpha could be enough, don't have time to test all combinations right now).

The other option is to rely on the automatic LOD texture creator, which is usually quite good (e.g. good enough for all of our stock assets). Problems with it often seem to be related to the LOD uv map. For example, I took a quick look at that Aldi asset, and unless I'm mistaken, reusing the same texture space for two walls (back and right) that have different texturing in the original building confuses the automatic system. It's probably a good idea to avoid UV stacking in the LOD model if problems arise.

 

[ds01]

Guys - I've found that having diffuse, specular AND alpha textures for the lod will fix this problem. It works for me consistently. Try it .

Hopefully CO will fix in time but this really doesn't take long as a temporary workaround - alpha can be a solid white and reused. Normal is not required. Downsize your main specular.

 

[templeofdoom]

ds01 - when you say downsize your sepcular, do you mean the greyscale values or the physical size of the map's resoultion?

 

[BaskB]

Guys - I've found that having diffuse, specular AND alpha textures for the lod will fix this problem. It works for me consistently. Try it .

Hopefully CO will fix in time but this really doesn't take long as a temporary workaround - alpha can be a solid white and reused. Normal is not required. Downsize your main specular.

Confirmed! You sir are a legend

For my tests I've just used the same texture size (512x512 etc) then _lod_a (alpha) as 100% white, and the _lod_s (specular) as 50% greyscale (yes all 512x512 pixels the lazy way) and this has resolved the issue instantly

 

[soldyne]

I will confirm as well. I created 9 new assets with custom models and needed to upload the lod_d, lod_a and lod_s but my assets work now. thanks for the workaround and good luck tracking down the root cause.

also, thanks for giving us thumbnails on trees and props...now I have to go back and update about 50 props...that won't be fun, but, oh well, I needed to remove the "createruining" from them anyway. oh and thanks for fixing the prop size error.

now if only we could have the ability to place props during the game like trees...

 

[namspopof]

Thx for the tips DS01. Problem resolved for me too.