Speedtree Screen-door LOD issue when FOV is changed

Hey guys,

We’ve just recently put the new screen-dooring for trees into the game.
It generally works well, until we programmatically change the FOV.

We have implemented a telescope which zooms in and out by changing the FOV.

However, this seems to cause the Screendoor LODs to show both the animated version and the billboard version simultaneously.

It looks really bad.

I’ve attached a Video demonstrating the issue: - YouTube

Cheers guys.

EDIT: We’re currently running 4.7.1. was a fix for this in the later hot-fixes?

Hello FacePalm.exe,

After taking a look at the video you provided, it seems the LOD switching happens when you are looking through the telescope alone. Depending on how you have implemented this feature, the LOD’s for the trees are taking into account the change in distance of the camera from the player.

If your LOD’s are set to switch upon distance relative to player camera for some reason, this could the be cause as well. Is there anywhere within the telescope feature where you are doing anything like this?

Thank you,

To answer your questions: No it is NOT distance based. it is purely when the FOV is changed between camera’s, or generally if there’s a sudden change in the FOV.

I’ve looked further into this issue, and it only seems to happen when the trees (foliage) are paint-bucketed onto the mesh.

After the paint bucket tool is used, ALL foliage painted after ends up having this strange behavior as well.

I was able to replicate the behavior in a blank project you can grab from HERE

It contains a pawn which you can trigger the camera switch with the T key, and zoom with the mouse wheel.

It has no movement, and there is no change in the position of the camera at all.

NOTE: This is a 4.7.1 project.

Hey again FacePalm.exe,

So I have been attempting to narrow down the root of your issue after taking a look at the project you provided. I noticed that the issue only occurs with the mobile versions of the Static Meshes. I attempted to test your issue in a blank project using the camera zoom blueprint and a different speed tree model, and I was unable to reproduce the issue you are reporting on my end using the same settings you used when filling the foliage with the Paint Bucket tool.

Perhaps this LoD switching has something to do with the mobile version of the mesh because when I used the Conifer_Desktop model from the free SpeedTree model pack, I was not seeing the same issue occur. Would you mind testing this on your end to confirm this is the case?

Thank you,

Sorry for the delay, was on Easter holidays.

I’ve tested further, and found the root issue.

Our tree’s have the “Start Cull Distance” and “End Cull Distance” set in the painting Instance settings. Once these are disabled, it’s then fine.

It happens with both mobile and desktop trees.

Again, this only seems to cause issues when you paint-bucket them onto the terrain/mesh.

NOTE: You need to delete the painted tree’s after paint-bucketing, or it still continues to cause issues.

For now, we’ll be disabling the instance culling (As we stream levels in and out.)

Not a great solution, but it works.

Hey FacePalm.exe,

Thank you for the extra bit of information on this issue, and I am glad you have at least some workaround while we investigate further.

Regards,