Does anyone know where I can find a tutorial on LODs?

Thanks

I don't know if there are any formal tutorials out there, but here's pretty much all you need to know:

-there are up to five lod levels: superhigh, high, medium, low, superlow

-lod geometries are exported in the form [permutation name] [superhigh/high/medium/low/superlow].jms

-you do not need a lod for every permutation but if you leave one out the game will replace it with the nearest existing lod from another permutation; you may need to manually fix references in Guerilla in this case

-to trigger lods you must fixx out the lod cutoff scale fields in the .gbxmodel; each represents the minimum number of pixels on the screen an object takes up before it is switched to the next lower LOD (or disappears in the case of 'superlow'.)

-the multires modifier in 3ds is a Godsend and makes LODing geometry a breeze; however it will likely break any rig and/or region stuff on your model so be prepared to do some manual fixing. If multires doesn't give you the result you want you can try the optimize modifier or downres manually until it becomes more manageable.
Edited by teh lag on Nov 7, 2011 at 10:45 AM

Tyvm tehlag !
I was wondering how it works for regions. Now i can make lods for my 7k poly reach hog.
Any polycount limit advice for each LOD ?.
Either I'll check bungie's LODs count.

Given that there are 5 LODs I generally just aim to go down in increments of 1/5 the tri count - that's one of the things multires lets you specify (% of original tri/vert count) which is why I find it so lovely. But yeah, when in doubt look at what Bungie did.

I have been really busy and havn't been able to check my thread for responses till now.

I do have one question: what do you mean [permutation name]? what is a permutation name?

Thanks for responding.

It's the name of the permutation being exported; if you're just exporting a perm called "base" your models would be "base superhigh.jms", "base high.jms"...

If your model has no permutations you can just leave that part out and call them "superhigh.jms" etc.

Got it, thanks for the help.

I will be finishing up a weapon that I am working on soon, and I plan to try it out on that.

LODS? Probably know what they are, but what does the abbreviation mean?

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