Hey guys,
Just a quick LOD question here (I’m not on my Unreal Engine computer at the moment so I can’t test it).
I have a model in 3ds with thousands of meshes/polys in it and I want to start setting up a LOD system in UE4 so it doesn’t kill the FPS.
Now I don’t want to go into each mesh/poly and setup a LOD and then have to group them (like off the youtube tutorial) because this will take ages.
Is it possible to run the “Batch ProOptimize” plugin in 3ds which spits out a different . file each optimization level and then export each one of those . files as an .fbx and import them into UE4 as the Import LOD Level option?
Sorry if that doesn’t make sense, just writing this on the go 
Please let me know if something I’ve typed doesn’t read right or is confusing!
Cheers
You can export the lod channel as a separate file. After that you will have to click on the static mesh in the content browser - choose LOD - import LOD1/2/3…
I dont know if it’s possible to use that plugin, but depending on the mesh it’s better to do the LOD by hand 
Hmm okay it seems to work but not the way I want it.
I’m importing the FBX (with thousands of meshes) as an un-combined mesh, so the UVs and Textures work correctly for each mesh.
The only problem is now each mesh is its own and if I import LOD1 into that single mesh (and select the optimised FBX) it imports the whole scene as the LOD1 for that single mesh.
I can’t really seem to win here. I either import it as a combined mesh, but have the UVs all overlapping and stuffed with a LOD that works, or import them un-combined with the UV and textures all correct but no LOD.
Any ideas?
I think atm it’s not possible to import a fbx file with several assets as an uncombined mesh. That’s only possible when you import the fbx file normally (then you can enable/disable “combine meshes”) 
Oh thought so
You know what would fix the problem, having a naming convention like the _UCX that works for LODs.
You could then merge the two files together, and rename the lower detail meshes with _LOD at the end and import them as one FBX and that should work.
Hope this may come a in the future
I think that I have read somewhere that they would like to add this features in the future
Yup I really hope this is planned, I really can’t see any other way to get around it (unless I group every single mesh individually over 7000 times).
Not sure if a script in 3ds has been designed to do this?
Anyway, here’s hoping!
Sorry to keep bringing this topic up, I’ve tried asking in 3ds programmers forums but they are very inactive forums.
I’m just wondering if anyone has any experience with 3ds script writing or know of a way I can group similar named objects?
Below is a snip of what is currently in my scene, there are thousands named like this. I need to be able to group the two similar named objects
(so I can make a LOD group in 3ds ). I can’t seem to find a way of doing it automatically, I have to select both of them, group them, create LOD.
