Having issues with Skeletal Meshes and LOD

I’m having some trouble setting up LODs for a skeletal mesh. I have two LODs and am trying to set the Screen Size so that the LOD change is sufficiently in the distance to avoid popping. This gives me some problems.

  1. If I set Screen Size of LOD1 to, say, 0.2 then it looks great in the editor, but when I run either in the viewport or standalone then the I never get to see my LOD1. The smallest value I can put in Screen Size of LOD1 is 0.52 and when I run this standalone then it is a little bit too close for my liking. LOD0 Screen Size is set to 1, although I’m not sure if this is even used. LODHysteresis is 0.02, although as I understand it, this value is a buffer zone to prevent the mesh from flickering continually between LODs at a certain distance.

  2. Because of this I can’t have any additional LODs further away, because the furthest possible point that LODs are triggered is at 0.52 Screen Size. Which is pretty close so going lower than 50% of tris of the close model gives noticeable popup.

  3. If I copy more than one of these object into the scene, only the first one ever changes LOD. The additional copies never trigger LOD1 and remain at LOD0 no matter how far I walk. But the LODs behave perfectly well in the editor, just not when I try to run the game.

I’ve spent a while fiddling with this, and cannot find anything in the docs or forum about whether there is either a bug with skeletal mesh LODs or whether there is something I am missing in my setup. Can anyone confirm that multiple skeletal mesh LODs are possible and if so then what am I doing wrong? Thanks.

Hi Moo,

Would you mind posting this to the AnswerHub? #3 sound like an issue that needs to be looked into. I don’t want to discount your other issues but that with #3 if you cannot get the LOD to trigger on additional copies this could be a bug or setup issue that we can help out with.

Once you’ve posted the issue can you make sure to link the AnswerHub post here as well for full coverage.

Thank you!

Tim

Sure thing.
In writing the post I tested the creating copies “bug” again and it seems even stranger than I first thought. Depending on what I set ScreenSize to I can get a given percentage of my multiple copies to show LOD1 correctly (at any distance) or not in game. Always shows correctly in the editor.

More info on AnswerHub: