Guys,
My speed trees look badly distorted at a distance but seem to look better when the player gets up close to them, how do I sort this so that the look as intended from further away?
Del.
Might have something to do with your LODs, hard to tell without a screenshot. Could try changing the screen space of each individual LOD group and replacing the final LODs billboard with the regular material thats used on the other LODs
Hi DP,
This is what they look like from a distance:
And what they look like close up:
I think you’re right with LOD but how do I make sure they retain their detail throughout the game?
You can play with the LOD distance to change when it transitions. Creating and Using LODs | Unreal Engine Documentation
Thanks for that Zac, because I’ve used multiple copies of the same tree throughout my level do I need to set the LOD for each individual tree or just the static mesh for the tree model?
Just in the static mesh editor, which will effect every instance of that static mesh.
Thanks Zac, Much Appreciated, I’ll start tinkering with it right away!
I’ve got 4 LOD levels in each tree mesh I’ve set the screen size for LOD 0 to 0.01 all the other LOD levels have automatically downsized from there.
My thinking is that as soon as screen size reaches 0.01, LOD 0 the mesh with the highest detail will always show, unless its really tiny in which case the others will show.
But I’m still getting a noticeable mesh change in game, how can I set this so only LOD 0 will show and not the others that have lesser detail?
I recently have this problem too, only with speedtrees: the LODs work ok in the static mesh preview window, but not in the edior itself. E.g. a tree at LOD0 with screensize 0.001 remains at LOD0 in the static mesh window till you really zoom out a lot, but when you place it in the editor it automatically goes to a higher LOD at even a small distance, where its screensize is not even 10% or 0.1.
Anybody else with that problem with speedtrees and got a solution for it?
@Delta1: You can set the screen size property for LOD0 to 0.0, which should make it the only LOD level to be displayed. But, it is not recommended to do so, since the performance implications of many instances of high details objects. You should try to find a suitable setting for the LOD that you are satisfied with, and use at least a 2 or 3 levels of details for the high detailed objects.
There is also an option that you can select to use, a transition sequence which is being fired when the LOD change happens, and it usually takes about a second to do this effect.
This material effect is designed to work best with the Temporal Aliasing the engine just use, but you can perhaps choose to use a non-temporal aliasing method, eg FXAA, which should have a refreshing effect on the tree leaves. It’s an issue with TAA and vertex animated foilage (including trees, etc) that a huge amount of smearing occures and the trees and grass starts to appear blurry even from a short distance. FXAA could be better to your use case.
Cheers for that!
Sorry, for not keeping up with this thread. But it might be worth either installing the Simplygon LOD Plugin and waiting till 4.14 since you’ll be able to add/remove and modify LODs for static meshes.
Hey Dp, don’t apologise, I appreciate your advice and everyone else that’s commented constructively on this thread!
Thanks guys!