What’s the best way to create LODs for foliage? I tried thinning out the mesh by reducing faces on the trunk and deleting some leaf planes, however this made the leaf cover too thin and somewhat see-through.
Another idea I had was to create billboards, however, how do I get a proper orthographic shot of the tree?
For distant trees probably use the imposter system
I have a tool on the marketplace that create various types of LODs including Billboards:
From 0 to object.
Step 1:
Go outside gather 10+ leaves, maybe a piece of bark.
If grabbing the piece of bark is not possible take a picture of it.
Step 2:
Clean the leaves and the bark. Place them on a scanner and scan one side.
Step 3:
Generate the texture to use. Split a 4k image in 4.
Top lefet bark scan. Bottom left bark scan.
Top right leaves.
Bottom right: empty.
(Make the other side with the leavea in the same exact spot).
Step 4:
Model and texture the leaf.
For this you want 4 vertex in a line.
..._.
Then extrude the 2 middle vertex up and downwards.
Turn the edges into corners.
You end up with 8 tris total.
Depending on the leave imagea, you want to then simplify further or make more complex.
Step 5:
Model a branch.
Blender, using hair and direction + object lenght works best.
You can comb the leaves to give each a unique feel at very little cost (they are instanced).
Once happy with the brank, suplicate the hair and turn it into a mesh.
Step 6:
Create a flat piece that resembels the branxh as much as possible. Take care to also sculpt the UVs (use a grid to help).
Bake down the sculpted branch onto the new object to obtain the textures.
Step 7:
Place the baked texture into the bottom right of the original texture.
Duplicate the branch and re-position its texture.
You now have a branch impostor.
Usually make anothee 3 fronds or so to have variation.
When all is said and done you will have a very detailed model that LODs down without being overly distinguisible (provided the engine light doesn’t screw up).
Usually - you can also just split the texture to remove the leaves and create a lower version of just the fronds and bark.
It depends on how much detail the tree needs to have.
Generally, more vert and less transparency means better performance…
A full LOD0 Tree
Blender’s material view of one that’s made with branch impostors:
