Cars Making car LOD's - simple, quick and clean

[alekabul]

Hi, guys

Lately I've been busy with trying many car mods that come without any lod's. Learning from the masters I've had a flash of light in the scull - why not simply use Blender and work with merging vertices by distance to bring down the face count to at least 30-35k?! And sure enough it works - simple, quick and clean. The resulting lod has all of the objects that are necessary for distance of over 30 meters, with the correct material properties and has all the lights working as they were in the big car. Even the rims blur works so the transition from full to lod is seamless and doesn't break immersion.

So why not use the LOD Generator? Well, it requires installing of additional SDK and is more complicated than the use of Blender that I'm proposing.
All software that is used in this workflow is free (and CM is in use all of the time).
Content Manager is the better AC launcher and much more, Blender is full-featured 3d editor and ksEditor you can find inside the game's folder "..\sdk\editor\ksEditor.exe"

Step 1: getting the big model of the car ready for Blender
Enable "Developer Mode" of Content Manager by left-clicking several times on the "Version" number

Add "FBX Converter" in CM PligIns

Unpack the model into FBX

Import the FBX into Blender

Notice what's the count for the tris in particular and select all objects by click and "A"

Press "Tab" to enter edit mode and "A" again to make sure all vertices are selected

Use "M" key to bring the menu for Merge

Use the option box that appears in the lower left

Adjust the value to get ~30-35 000 tris

Export from Blender using the same folder and file name of the unpacked car

Don't rush to close Blender. Open ksEditor and load the FBX

If the car is horizontal, not 400 m long and all parts are in their usual place

Name the .kn5

You can test the distance in which the defects stop being visible in ksEditor by adjusting the FOV to 45 (about the usual for single screen cockpit view) using the mouse scroll and then move back with the arrow down. When it starts to look decent, right-click on the car to get a reading for the distance. It will come handy when editing "lods.ini" (and you will know if the lod is 400 m long before loading the game).
If the car's data is packed in "data.acd"

...

 

[alekabul]

Then open "lods.ini" and edit

Make sure the lod's .kn5 is into the car's folder

Test if the switching to the lod works in CM Showroom

If there is "data.acd" in the car's folder it is necessary to rename it to "data.acd-" to make the "data" folder and the edited "lods.ini" active.
That's it for the lod. The unpacked FBX files and textures folder are no longer necessary and can be deleted. Close Blender without saving the project.

PS - if you need to join some server with the same car for which you just made the lod use the "data.acd" tor the time being and then rename it again to "data.acd-" to enable the lod's at least for offline play. It makes a difference if the race is with many cars and the track topology permits visibility in the far distance - that's what lod's are for. Test for your self - load Brands Hatch with 40 cars in Track day and pick a high vantage point with F7 free cam

The large value of DIP means that both CPU and GPU are stressed with the load of rendering full resolution models in the distance with no lods.
With lods

In percentage load I had readings of ~45% at 1950 MHz in the first case and stable 39% at ~1150 MHz in the second so a mere 1 lod is a necessity as it brings down the power draw by almost 100% in some scenes. Tests were done without the CSP optimizations as I flicked the master-switch for this one.

 

[Mascot]

Interesting! Seems almost too good to be true.
Can you upload some of the LODs you've done for testing please?

 

[AccAkut]

Yes, this may actually work. But an important step in creating LODs is that you can get rid of objects and materials in total. Like much of the cockpit, the instruments, chassis details etc, basically thinning out the object tree you see on the right in Blender.
Merging the way you do there will also often mess up the UV maps which can be very obvious on LOD changing in-game.

 

[alekabul]

Interesting! Seems almost too good to be true.
Can you upload some of the LODs you've done for testing please?

I posted this thread exactly to avoid uploading non-original content on RD. I will give you a Google Drive link if you point me to a class and brand of cars that you wish to test.

Here is a sample - lods for the Alpine A110, Celica JDM, Liana, Lancer FQ 400 and Jagg Mk2 that I reworked the physics on before. The included "lods.ini" are edited to switch on 30 m and the lods work fine on my side.

NB - the making of lods is better done "domestically" on each system because the modded cars vary a lot. For example I don't really believe that the lod for Alpine will fit the model that you may have. If upon loading the game spits messages for missing textures that means there are important differences and although it will load eventually after you close the messages the lod will not work ok.

 

[Deleted member 223075]

More simple and faster, use LODgenerator

 

[Mascot]

I posted this thread exactly to avoid uploading non-original content on RD. I will give you a Google Drive link if you point me to a class and brand of cars that you wish to test.

Here is a sample - lods for the Alpine A110, Celica JDM, Liana, Lancer FQ 400 and Jagg Mk2 that I reworked the physics on before. The included "lods.ini" are edited to switch on 30 m and the lods work fine on my side.

Thanks very much. I tried a few of those but couldn't get them to work, but might have been using a slightly different version of the car with the same folder name, of course. I'd just get a stream of error pop-ups (a hundred or more) saying things like "...couldn't set texture:grey.dds for material...".
Just wondering if you've done any for cars uploaded here that haven't got lods, eg the recent BMW 320i STW-BTCC by PM3DM?

1998 BMW 320i STW-BTCC

Time has come! Initial release to get more feedback outside of our group, to help pushing these more forward. So we are bringing you are second car. Car is currently setup to be more safe, so it does understeer quite a bit, probably more then you...

www.racedepartment.com

That way we know we are all using the same car.
I'm genuinely interested to see how this works and what the results are like. It's sounds amazing.

 

[Mascot]

More simple and faster, use LODgenerator

I always read that results weren't all that great using this tool?

 

[Deleted member 223075]

I always read that results weren't all that great using this tool?

I don't know. I use it for some modded car that don't have it. Just need sometimes to adjust values of LOD or it cause lag or visibility/shaders bug.

But for sure its' faster and simple espciellay if you don't have any 3D software.

 

[Mascot]

@alekabul, I downloaded Blender and followed your instructions. Everything seemed to be going well until I tried to save the kn5 in kseditor, and then I get this message:

I assume I save kn5 just as 'car' ..?

 

[alekabul]

we are all using the same car

That BMW has ~87 000 tris for starters so the author is maybe right to omit the making of lods. Anyway, I prepared almost the same way as the others. Object origins were scattered so it came out bent out of shape first. After setting all objects origin to scene cener all works allright. Just that the difference between 87k and 30k is not that of 250k vs. 35k and the testing is not going to show clearly the usefulness of the process.

pm3dm_bmw_320i_stw.7z

drive.google.com

 

[alekabul]

@alekabul, I downloaded Blender and followed your instructions. Everything seemed to be going well until I tried to save the kn5 in kseditor, and then I get this message:
View attachment 367636
I assume I save kn5 just as 'car' ..?

Nope, that message means that ksEditor doesn't find one of the textures and you need to correct this before saving.

This is how to re-select the texture and correct the error. In the lower left when you scroll down you must not see red and then you are ready for export. From the message I assume you need to re-select texture for the tire tread. Whatever dark texture you find should do. Inspect visually the replacement and save. It affects only the lod, not the main model. "No textures" for the lod means it's kn5 won't hold unnecessary duplicates of the textures from the main model. If the main model has missing texture the game will spit error messages each time it has to load the incomplete model.

PS- This error is irregular. I created the error for the screen to illustrate. The BMW was different kind of tough nut to crack.

 

[alekabul]

If you make one folder at which to point ksEditor it won't give you this trouble on loading as weirdly it requires the textures to be in "textures" subfolder next to the FBX and the persistance .ini and yet it doesn't automatically parse it and screams "FIRE" falsely. If you make a folder for workflow reservoir into which you move all from "unpacked" you don't get this as the Editor remembers where the textures were from the last time.

 

[alekabul]

@alekabul, I downloaded Blender and followed your instructions. Everything seemed to be going well until I tried to save the kn5 in kseditor, and then I get this message:
View attachment 367636
I assume I save kn5 just as 'car' ..?

Or maybe you saved FBX from Blender without overwriting the unpacked one.
Export from Blender using the same folder and file name of the unpacked car so the ksEditor finds the .ini file to read the material properties from.

 

[Mascot]

Or maybe you saved FBX from Blender without overwriting the unpacked one.
Export from Blender using the same folder and file name of the unpacked car so the ksEditor finds the .ini file to read the material properties from.

Ah, thanks, that could be it. Might be worth adding more detail to your instructions?

 

[alekabul]

Ah, thanks, that could be it. Might be worth adding more detail to your instructions?

Already ahead of you on that one. Thanks for the help and I wish you good fun!

 

[Mascot]

OK, everything worked except the scale is wrong. I'm guessing I need to define the scale when importing the fbx into Blender? (only downloaded Blender a few hours ago, so sorry if this is a daft question).

 

[Mascot]

OK, everything worked except the scale is wrong. I'm guessing I need to define the scale when importing the fbx into Blender? (only downloaded Blender a few hours ago, so sorry if this is a daft question).

Never mind, found the scale when exporting the FBX. Proper scale is 0.01.

Edit: got it all working now. The folder location and correct scale were the key.
Thanks @alekabul, I've never created LODs before but people always seem to consider them a PITA and a time-consuming process. I can't imagine there's a quicker and simpler way than your method, and the results are great. As you said, lights are intact. In VR (Rift) I couldn't see the LOD transition at 30m, possibly 25m, and thats from a 175k tri model down to 30k.

 

[alekabul]

scale when exporting the FBX

The scale on export depends on choosing

The default "All Local" is 0.01 of "FBX Units Scale" and by switching between the two there`s no need to edit the "1.00". The screen in the instructions reflects that.

Glad you like the results. My concern is for the setups of 4k single screens used for gaming as there may be some need of increasing the distance for switching in "lods.ini".

 

[Mascot]

The scale on export depends on choosing
View attachment 367831

The default "All Local" is 0.01 of "FBX Units Scale" and by switching between the two there`s no need to edit the "1.00". The screen in the instructions reflects that.

Glad you like the results. My concern is for the setups of 4k single screens used for gaming as there may be some need of increasing the distance for switching in "lods.ini".

Thanks - gotcha.
For my 1080p Rift I had a ~25k lod at 30m and a ~4k lod at 50m. Transitions seemed pretty smooth at that resolution, but I might add a couple more in between. The only thing I noticed was the high-level brake light disappearing, but main lights all remained on. I think the results are pretty good. It took me around 15 minutes start-finish to get the second lod in game. It can probably be done quicker than that with more practice.
Interested to see how others get on with it.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your method.