It is really cool, to have a nativ LOD tool within UE4 now, and since I read that Epic wants to expand on it I would like to contribute 2 Ideas, which i think would greatly advance the tool:
A: AutoBillboard Creation
For the last LOD level it would be great to have an AutoBillboard option, that automatically would take a snapshot of the Mesh and apply it to a simple 2-Plane Gemoetry. I know there are plenty of ways to optimize that, but a simple solution like that would be great for the start.
B: MaxLodX Meshes
A limit similar to Unitys “Max Mesh Trees”, that could be enabled, and if so, the user could define a limit of how many Instances of the current Mesh may be drawn Within the desired LOD range.
as example:
There are 100 Barrels within a Level with 4 LOD levels (0-3). Without max lod meshes enabled all Barrels would draw their LOD dependant on distance. With Max Lod meshes Set to 20 and the Max LOD level set to 2, only 20 Barrels could be drawn with LOD 0-2, any further Barrel would be drawn with LOd 3 regardless of the distance.
To add to the list, since the blueprint render target to texture already exists, it would be convenient if there was an option in LOD creation to automatically use it to generate a flattened material for distant LODs where you won’t see the detail anyway.
LOD materials would be create. Just static bool parameter if LOD level is higher than X. Then user could make optimized materials easily without dublicating every material for LOD’s variations.