I am looking into how to make a virtual VR tour for houses. and am currently looking on how to make a garden that would not be to heavy as a background, But might also want to be walked through aswell. As far as I understand to make something like this work using objecst with LOD’s will be important ( Or objecst that are really low poly)
However I have been looking on the Unreal market and have not been able to find a lot of plants that would work in a europian garden setting. And some that do are purely designed for Pre rendered movies/pictures( in the millions of tri’s) The best I have found are the megascans. But those do still seem quite heavy and most of those are focused on more of a forrest scene.
Are there other websites that sell 3d models designed specifcally for games/VR ?
Or are there maybe other solutions I have not thought of?
Hi, why not reduce the tree meshes (or any meshes!) yourself from with Unreal Engine by using the LODs ‘custom’ option in the mesh editor. Reduce the LOD Group to maybe ‘smallprop’ (4 LODs) and then change the close-up LOD0 to maybe 50 percent triangle of the original mesh. Mess about with this setting to optimize it, you might be able to go lower, but still keep a good visual shape of the tree close up, do a few tests. You can also uncheck ‘Auto Complete LOD Distance’ to modify LOD1,2 & 3 by increasing the screen percentage so they change sooner when you back away the camera. Also, reduce the tree texture’s size ‘Max In-Game’ so you’re not using unnecessarily large textures on your mesh, limit them all to say 512 or 1K max. not 2K, 4K etc.
I did not know Unreal engine had a automatic LOD generator. I will go look into it, I have already tried to do something similar in blender by using the decimate modifier which I assume kind of does the same thing. Though it had a lot of problems with Texture no longer being applied properly to the object and weird geometry.
Yes, and a very good one. Check out this video ‘Unreal Engine 4 Tutorial - Level of Details (LODs)’ by Ryan Laley on YT. It explains the UE mesh LODs well and how to customize them.
When you reduce the mesh ‘too much’ it can distort the mesh and the textures won’t be mapped in the same place because the triangles have moved. It’s a case of optimizing to a point where the mesh still looks good without noticing any change in mesh shape or texture. So do it a step at a time and review on screen. Also, test at the respective distance from the camera, and that’s easy to do in the UE mesh editor. Just move in and out to the points where the LODs change.
If you are looking for ‘free’ tree models check out the marketplace, Quixel recently released ‘Megascans Trees: European Black Alder (early access)’ which are excellent. I also sometimes use the Twinmotion trees in UE using the Twinmotion Content pack but this does add about 30gb to the engine install. There are alot of other free grass and plants packs and sometime you get a few good trees in a pack like ‘A Boy and His Kite’ or ‘Open World Demo Collection’. Also in the permanently free ‘Downtown West Modular Pack’ , ‘City Park Environment Collection’ and alot of plant packs from Project Nature.