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

[alekabul]

View attachment 441472
why my front bumper disappear when i doing merge by distance?

One thing comes to mind - normals directions is messed up on that mesh.
Well, sometimes with some models it is necessary to spare some individual parts from transforming. In this case if only the bumper behaves oddly - select it first and use "H" key in Blender to hide it before doing the "merge by distance". Choose the distance wisely as going too high will cause many small details to vanish and if there are lights with small meshes (i.e. LEDs) then they stop working on the lod. If that be the case - firstly do the "H" hiding on the small meshes that you want to keep.
To inspect the result before exporting from Blender - unhide all with "Alt" + "H"

 

[alekabul]

View attachment 441472
why my front bumper disappear when i doing merge by distance?

Another probability is that the scale on that bumper is 100 times bigger than the rest of the mesh and in spite it appearing normal it shrinks a lot more when merge by distance is applied. Easiest solution - hide it like I described to avoid shrinking to a nought.

 

[alexlockout]

alekabul
"Press" Tab "to enter edit mode and" A "again to make sure all vertices are selected"
I downloaded the blender from your link from the first post (I didn't use the blender before), when you press "Tab" "edit mode" does not turn on, "object mode" remains. when you click on "object mode", no other modes are available there either. how to switch?

 

[alekabul]

alekabul
"Press" Tab "to enter edit mode and" A "again to make sure all vertices are selected"
I downloaded the blender from your link from the first post (I didn't use the blender before), when you press "Tab" "edit mode" does not turn on, "object mode" remains. when you click on "object mode", no other modes are available there either. how to switch?

It probably didn't switch because right after you loaded the car in Blender all objects were deselected or were selected as a group. Left-click on any part of the car, then press "A" to select the rest and then "Tab" should get you in "Edit Mode"

And if you are using Blender for the very first time I need to point out that the default scene (cube, light and camera) needs to have the three objects deleted before you import the car. So, open anew, select all, "X" to delete, then import and follow the tutorial.

 

[alexlockout]

when there is an initial scene, edit mode can be enabled, but it is worth deleting the initial scene and importing fbx and edit mode is no longer available. I do everything according to the instructions from the topic.

 

[alekabul]

Alright, I will extend the instruction a bit. In Blender, after you import the car, go to

Press "H" to hide the "Empty" objects. Then click on a part of the car and press "A" to select all visible and "Tab" to edit. Change to "Edge select" and hold middle button pressed to rotate the view and examine the reflections on the car. You need to preserve as much as possible the reflections by the end of the edit.

 

[alexlockout]

after editing and exporting from blender, ks editor does not load the edited fbx.
upd.
the problem turned out to be in the language of the "downloads" and "documents" folders in which I placed my files. Transferring the working files to the root of the "C" drive, everything worked without problems.

 

[alexlockout]

good day. I understand correctly that reducing the number of "objects" is much more important than reducing the "triangles"?

 

[alekabul]

good day. I understand correctly that reducing the number of "objects" is much more important than reducing the "triangles"?

Reducing the number of objects and/or materials helps decrease the number of draw calls (cpu load) and the lower tris count helps decrease the gpu load. So both are beneficial. But before you start deleting objects read what Kunos recommends for structure and budgets on lods in the pdf "..\sdk\dev\car_pipeline_2.0rev\AC_Pipeline_PUB_Rev2.0.pdf". There is parents structure in each model that has to be preserved. They are the "Empty" objects that I referred to before.

 

[alexlockout]

Reducing the number of objects and/or materials helps decrease the number of draw calls (cpu load) and the lower tris count helps decrease the gpu load. So both are beneficial. But before you start deleting objects read what Kunos recommends for structure and budgets on lods in the pdf "..\sdk\dev\car_pipeline_2.0rev\AC_Pipeline_PUB_Rev2.0.pdf". There is parents structure in each model that has to be preserved. They are the "Empty" objects that I referred to before.

Thanks for the clarification. apparently in my system (i5 9400f + rtx 2060) the weak point is cpu. with a significant decrease in the number of triangles, performance does not increase much. but if you reduce the number of objects, then the difference is very noticeable.

 

[alekabul]

The way Kunos deals with the issue and is rarely the case with mod cars is the use of "COCKPIT_HR" and "COCKPIT_LR" parents. The switch from high-res cockpit with many materials and objects to low-res with one material and fewer objects is set usually at 7 m from the observer so that is what makes the biggest difference between official cars and the rest. And the 4 cascades in resolution of the exterior instead of just 2.

So if you want to make the effort to match Kunos for performance - from the mod model isolate the objects of the interior (by selecting and hiding the others). Make sure to hide the "mirrors" mesh too. Then create the emptys (Kunos calls it "null hierarchy" in the pdf) of "COCKPIT_HR" and "COCKPIT_LR" parents. Then make the "COCKPIT_HR" parent to all selected objects of the interior. Then duplicate all of those objects without moving them. Then make the "COCKPIT_LR" parent to all new objects (the duplicates). Then join as many of those duplicates as possible without changing the look of the interior viewed from the outside. Dark objects are joined to use the shader of the dashboard, colored objects to use single different shader (seats for example), headliner usually differs from the others too. Then simplify the geometry of the low-res objects and connect the non-essential parents (like the arrows for the dash, doors, etc) only into the "COCKPIT_HR" structure.
That can improve the performance of the mod a lot but it means that you have to save the changes in the original model too. And that has to be done before you start making the lods.

 

[Frank Alexandre da Silva]

I exported a car fine but now with another the export takes long and the result file is huge, double the size of the original. But the poly count is 30.% Any idea?

 

[Frank Alexandre da Silva]

...

 

[alekabul]

I exported a car fine but now with another the export takes long and the result file is huge, double the size of the original. But the poly count is 30.% Any idea?

https://www.racedepartment.com/attachments/ksed-2-jpg.367406/

"Car (No Texture)" for exporting the small lod .kn5 file.

 

[alexlockout]

I wonder if it is possible to edit already finished lod? the situation - I made edits to the main .kn5, and wanted to make edits to all lod, edited them in a blender, but I can't convert back to .kn5 using ksEditor. Is it possible to somehow edit the previously made lod, or will I have to do them again?

 

[alekabul]

I wonder if it is possible to edit already finished lod? the situation - I made edits to the main .kn5, and wanted to make edits to all lod, edited them in a blender, but I can't convert back to .kn5 using ksEditor. Is it possible to somehow edit the previously made lod, or will I have to do them again?

After you are done with Blender editing of the lod model -> export the model in fbx (overwrite the main model's fbx) and keep the "texture" subfolder of the main model and the model's "**.fbx.ini" Open the fbx in ksEditor. Make sure all materials and transparency appear correct or correct them. Then in ksEditor "Save KN5" > "Car (No Textures)". Name the kn5 correspondingly to contents of lods.ini of the car's data.

 

[alexlockout]

After you are done with Blender editing of the lod model -> export the model in fbx (overwrite the main model's fbx) and keep the "texture" subfolder of the main model and the model's "**.fbx.ini" Open the fbx in ksEditor. Make sure all materials and transparency appear correct or correct them. Then in ksEditor "Save KN5" > "Car (No Textures)". Name the kn5 correspondingly to contents of lods.ini of the car's data.

thanks, all worked well. I don’t know why I didn’t think of adding a folder with textures from the main model to lod.

 

[alekabul]

thanks, all worked well. I don’t know why I didn’t think of adding a folder with textures from the main model to lod.

Glad to hear you have results. Only thing I want to add - the final kn5 of the lod is saved without the textures in it. Game uses the same textures from the main kn5. The folder is a must for correcting eventual problems in ksEditor.

Cheers!

 

[alexlockout]

Glad to hear you have results. Only thing I want to add - the final kn5 of the lod is saved without the textures in it. Game uses the same textures from the main kn5. The folder is a must for correcting eventual problems in ksEditor.

Cheers!

yes, I know, thank you.

 

[nill86]

in content manager i have install FBX pluging but i dont find unpack KN5 in showroom CM

what happen ?