Misc LOD generator 1.4

[garyjpaterson]

idk what you all got, at 10% LOD D looks like this, and this is far bigger than what LOD D is supposed to be sized at ~220m:
View attachment 281754

your manual one:
View attachment 281755

edit: typos

Also consider the manual one is 37x less objects and 2.3x less tris, all whilst preserving the skin perfectly (which is basically the function of the LOD D). Not just about how good it looks at a distance.

 

[CC]

Also consider the manual one is 37x less objects and 2.3x less tris, all whilst preserving the skin perfectly (which is basically the function of the LOD D). Not just about how good it looks at a distance.

Shaders was my main concern,
I mean how to drop yes 100,s of objects and maintaining a smooth mesh,
which maybe could be 100% doable at some point in time,
but how to control what materials goes where, which materials to remove or save.

 

[Jayenn]

Original Author here. Nice to see this on RD. I was hesitating back when i wrote the batch script, because i thought uploading something to RD containing exe files would probably not be received well, lol.

As for the quality of the LODs: To be honest, i don't think CC or Gary are necessarily the people who will benefit from this. Handmade LODs will of course ALWAYS be better, no doubt, you guys are way more talented at doing this. I still think that with the parameters i used back then (not sure what the parameters are that are used in this version) it produced pretty impressive results considering this is a fully automated process. Of course Simplygon itself is "dumb". It will delete small objects like lights. Of course it will keep a lot of objects that are unnecessary for lower def LODs. Of course it won't be able to reduce the tris as effective. BUT it does recuce tris by a huge margin while still producing results that look fine in-game.

I made this to have some sort of tool that lets me improve overall game performance when playing with the many mods i have that don't have lods. It took me a couple of days to go through all of them (It's even quite a lot faster now with the improved script). Try doing that by hand.

But of course i can understand you guys criticizing the LOD quality. It was never meant to replace handmade ones for the beautiful models you create. It was made to be a passable option for 3d modeling plebs like me, lol. Also i have to say that the Transit examples shown on the title page don't really do it justice. It can do a lot better than that.

Anyways, i hope that this tool at least leads to no more car uploads on RD that don't have LODs, because the performance increase by no LODs vs. using this tool to generate them is quite huge.

 

[garyjpaterson]

Yeah definitely, as I said at the start - its better than nothing! If you have a bunch of mods without LODs, this should improve things somewhat.

I usually spent quite a lot of time getting my LODs neat and tidy, which is more OCD than necessary and not really practical, and I wouldn't expect that from anyone else.

But I do think there is somewhere in the middle that would require relative small effort with decent results (ie using a built-in poly cruncher, but having more control on what stays and goes etc).

But overall its nice that the option is there

 

[Jayenn]

But I do think there is somewhere in the middle that would require relative small effort with decent results (ie using a built-in poly cruncher, but having more control on what stays and goes etc).

Yeah, a way to exclude objects from being deleted would be awesome. In theory even that could be automated , for light objects for example, by just using the object names defined in the lights.ini. Maybe someone can take another look at the possible options for the spl files. The spl files contain all the parameters for the conversion process. Simplygon has quite a lot of documentation availible here: https://simplygondocs.azureedge.net/8-2htmldocs/articles/starthere/typicalinstallation.html, so maybe someone with more knowledge and patience can find a way.

 

[Amir Vodokotlic]

I wonder if Ilja x4fab would look at it this further.

Having LOD generator integrated into content manager.

That would be incredible.

Also for start this is great step forward.

 

[Please Stop This]

@Jayenn
yes, seen simplygon docs, looking into...
@AMIR ALAYA
no wonder, your right, he said somthg like this should be integrated in CM, without extra simplygon oc

 

[Jayenn]

I wonder if Ilja x4fab would look at it this further.

Having LOD generator integrated into content manager.

That would be incredible.

Also for start this is great step forward.

I showed this to Ilja around a month ago and he was quite intrigued to integrate it into CM. That is how i got the modified modded kseditor from him that allows for batched LOD fbx to kn5 conversion. But i have no idea where it is on his seemingly endless list of things he wants to do.

I wouldn't be super hard to accomplish, seeing that there's a C++ API with documentation availible.

 

[Emà!!!]

I try the tool since version 1.1 and i find it really good to make LODs for the hundreds of mods without them. And the result is really good, imho.
Obviously its not in competition with top modders that make accurate work on their cars like RSS or others, but is for cars that will never have this finishing touch. And we have many good cars with 200, 300, 600 or more triangles, unusable in a full grid if you have not a top pc.

Ps: before of this i make my lods with 3dsmax and pro optimizer, but i'm not able to make a lod with working wheels...

 

[Patrik Marek]

I personally encourage every modder to learn how to do LODs, it teaches you about where and how you can save triangles, without messing up UV mapping etc, . and you actually become a better modeler as a result of that

yep, better then nothing but way worse then when it's done manually
part of the LODs is to reduce number of objects and especially number of materials, and the script doesn't do that from the look of things.

 

[Emà!!!]

yep, better then nothing but way worse then when it's done manually

In theory, yes. But actually, how many mods have lods way better than those made by this tool?
Not so much, imho.

 

[AccAkut]

In theory, yes. But actually, how many mods have lods way better than those, made by this tool?
Not so much, imho.

Those "made" by importing a Forza model sure won't have LODs

 

[Emà!!!]

Not only Forza's rip.... For example, the really good Ginetta Gt4/Supercup mod by Shaun Clarke has around 240k tris and only a lodB with 125k tris.
If i've not a great hardware, now i can make the other two, with 40 and 10k tris and enjoy the game and the mod himself whith higher resolution or higher details or better fps.... what's the problem with that?
None is forced to use it, but from my side, big thank you to the author.

 

[Jayenn]

As Patrik mentioned, Simplyon isn't great at deleting unnecessary objects. It's not a smart process that knows what kind of model it's dealing with and what is important enough to keep. It just deletes objects that become too small in the process of reducing the tris. The tri reduction works pretty well, you can't argue with that. If you scale up the LODs to bigger size they look terrible compared to manually done ones, but it isn't noticable in the game, so that's pretty nice.

The elephant in the room is definitely the number of objects though. If you take a modern system with good CPU power, AC's FPS is mostly limited by the CPU due to the game's threading. And reduction of tris only really helps the GPU. That's why so many ripped tracks run terribly in AC as long as you don't optimize them by combining objects and materials.

So yeah, please keep making LODs by hand, but also please use this tool if you don't feel like the car you're working on is worth the extra time.

 

[Patrik Marek]

Not only Forza's rip.... For example, the really good Ginetta Gt4/Supercup mod by Shaun Clarke has around 240k tris and only a lodB with 125k tris.
If i've not a great hardware, now i can make the other two, with 40 and 10k tris and enjoy the game and the mod himself whith higher resolution or higher details or better fps.... what's the problem with that?
None is forced to use it, but from my side, big thank you to the author.

forgive me if I'm wrong here, but didn't Shaun Clarke only update it ?? ,.. as in tweaking stuff on top what's already done ? (physics tweaks / texture tweaks ) , which doesn't speak of his skill to acutally make meshes from scratch ?

sure , it's better then nothing, but as Jayeen pointed out, the biggest issue for FPS is NUMBER of OBJECTS and MATERIALS used, if you then also have lot of objets sharing multiple materials, FPS goes up and the LOD doesnt' really help all that much

my LODs on Primera help quite a lot I think, but you will see that not only triangle count went down, but also nubmer of objects , and that's really what's needed the most

LodC and D was actually done FROM SCRATCH , rather then optimizing LODB , because not only it was faster but it also give me much cleaner result

no automatic optimizing tool would EVER give you something that will look similar to this ,and I belive it's 1 material, and another one for windows

perhaps there could be update to the tool where it would be smart about deleting objects and reducing materials , .. but this is going to be tricky

 

[garyjpaterson]

LODs are fun to make anyway

 

[Patrik Marek]

agreed, .. they take way less time then the actual car, and it's super valuable learning excercise !!! If someone is serious about making this his job one day, it's something they should start looking into

I don't want to take anything away from the tool, it's great for what it does, but its similar to things like "track builder" .. its' great for people who don't have the right skills to do it manually and often times it looks and works great, .. but they would never use track builder to build a real life track replica, - would they ? ( I mean people like Kunos ..etc)

 

[Emà!!!]

Many of you says "better then nothing".
Well, i'm not speaking about excellent scratch made mods like Nissan Primera or others with proper lods, i'm speaking exactly about the situation in which the choice is "this tool" or "nothing".
And i'm happy to have this, now. That's all.

 

[Patrik Marek]

Many of you says "better then nothing".
Well, i'm not speaking about excellent scratch made mods like Nissan Primera or others with proper lods, i'm speaking exactly about the situation in which the choice is "this tool" or "nothing".
And i'm happy to have this, now. That's all.

and that's totally fair, because it definitely helps and from distance, it might not really look that bad anyhow

 

[Shaun Clarke]

As I am all new to this, I take it I need the FBX files to be able to use this app, as there is nothing in the description of requirements