Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: NucNuc on March 06, 2009, 11:21:54 am
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I don't know what the different LOD's in most of the models around are necessary for, since there are some great models around without any and the also work fine (i.e. nuke's mod ships, the Fighter Pack of --Steve-0-- have only one LOD, Taristin's models like the Kelpie or Losna have just two).
Something else I encountered :
When rescaling a model with PCS2, that had more than one LOD, in many cases it didn't work.
After I deleted all the LOD's but the first, I had no problems with rescaling and the models worked fine in 3.6.9 and 3.6.10 builds.
So, what are three or even four LOD's are necessary for ? :confused:
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LOD stands for Level of Detail.
To save memory, when you're further away from a ship the details on the model greatly diminish. The fact that you didn't notice this is gewd.
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When enough RAM on your machine , no need for "smaller" LOD's ?
As I said: even with two Dante Shivan Mega-Juggernauts, one Orion and a few cruisers in a (test)mission, I had no problems with the gameplay ( GeForce 9800GT, 2 Gbyte RAM, Windows XP ). ( To be honest I didn't gave the look of ships so far away a lot of attention yet. )
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But not everyone has a Core 4 Octa with 8GB RAM and a GeForce 1337 Xtreem.
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Gah :hopping:
LODs have nothing to do with memory. In fact, they take up more memory. Their purpose is to limit the rendering load of your computer when the ship is viewed far away, especially since there are likely to be a lot more ships on the screen at that distance.
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Blowfish is right, LODs are a necessity for when there are many ships around, everything can't be rendered at full detail all the time. Plus, the Model Detail setting in the options (I think) can even let you force a lower detail level, or at least a switch to a lower one sooner, enabling broader hardware support.
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Thanks for the info on that. :)
You make me wise. :pimp:
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At least one LOD is critical for when ships are at a distance. LOD1 is also what's rendered in your target box view (lower left corner of the HUD.) With high-poly models it's critical to have the original low-poly model in LOD1 or LOD2 since they're so detailed. And yes, the fact that you don't notice this is a good thing--I imagine if none of the high-poly models had LODs you wouldn't be getting the kind of performance you are. :)
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il lod my ships when i feel like it :D
To save memory
wrong. for loding to work correctly you must keep all levels of detail in memory. so it actually uses more memory. the purpose of lod-ing is to reduce cpu/gpu load.
But not everyone has a Core 4 Octa with 8GB RAM and a GeForce 1337 Xtreem.
then youre not cool enough to play nukemod :D