[EDIT by Scawen - originally posted in a suggestions thread, now moved subject to its own thread]


In my opinion, the system for adding LOD2 and LOD3 now requires some improvements.
Adding LODs is a very inconvenient process and requires exporting to the Main object each time. What if the LODs were separated and done like with wheels, so that it would be possible to load/edit them separately from the main car model and they would not intersect?

I agree the LOD system can be difficult to use.

I'm not really sure what you mean by "exporting to the main object every time". Is that when you are trying to load a LOD model that you have made in an external program? Can you describe the issue that comes up? Maybe it's possible to change the way the import function works.

Maybe more for the future: I know there is something confusing about the LODs sharing points, because points (vertices) don't have their own LOD that they belong to. Triangles do belong to one LOD but points don't, and this is often confusing (for two reasons: [1] all LOD1 points are visible when you are trying to work on a simpler model, and: [2] if you move a point in one LOD, it might affect the other LOD).

The way it works now might have advantages, sometimes. For example you could adjust LOD1 a bit and LOD2 would move at the same time, because you selected points that are used by both LODs. But maybe this isn't often really helpful. I'd be interested to hear from anyone if the sharing of points between LODs is of any help at all. I wonder if they should be completely separate.

Just now, to import a lod from obj, you need to add it as a sub-object, select the polygons, add them to the lod, and then remove the polygons from the sub-object and merge them with the Main.
If you import a Main immediately with a LOD, you will have to spend a long time and persistently selecting the polygons that will be in the LOD.
It would be much easier if it were possible to separate the main model and lods, for example loading lod 2 and lod 3 in a separate, as happens with wheels.

It's very useful to have LOD1 points inside LOD2 & LOD3, exactly because they are all linked together as a single object. You edit LOD1 and it automatically edits LOD2 & 3. However, it is a very painful process to recreate triangles on LOD2 and that's why probably most of the creators don't do it. Just for reference, 988 triangles on LOD2 took me a lot of hours of work, because you have to constantly switch back to LOD1 and check point by point and switch back to LOD2 and recreate it. You redo the whole 3d model all over again, but with a blueprint of your LOD1. And it's messy, because you have thousands of points, very unpleasant and confusing.

I think it's a wrong approach to import external .obj files into LOD2 or to have a separate view for LOD's, because you can't link the points to LOD1 or 3 and you cannot resize it properly, that's lazy and not an accurate method.

In my opinion, the best approach would be to reuse the already detailed LOD1 triangles. For example: a full detailed copy from LOD1 with a set limit of 1000 in LOD2 or keep it 8192 triangles. Then you just have to delete everything uneeded, until you get the satisfying LOD2 limit.

Maybe LOD2 could have its own subobject system as well? Then we could just copy the main obj or other subobject from LOD1 to LOD2 and only delete triangles/decrease the details. Would be way faster, if we could reuse the already spend hours of work on LOD1 triangles and not hassle point by point again on every single mod.

I won't mention LOD3, because you need 42 triangles and that's less than a 5 minute job.

I had a little adventure with LOD2, back at the start of modding...

I had made LOD1 with around 13k triangles and copied them all to LOD2, switched to LOD2 view and started attacking it. I figured that I'd keep any edges as they were to keep the shadow profile smooth, and just remove all the detail from the flat parts as that couldn't ever affect the shadow. I spent about a day of work over a week, I think, carefully choreographing the order of endless "merge to green" operations. (you can see where this is going now )

It never occurred to me that the points in LOD2 were the same points as LOD1 - it was quite a shock to see LOD1 mangled flat when I finally switched back, lots of swearing (no blame btw, it's the sort of thing I should have a) checked and b) twigged from the fact that there were also points there for triangles that I hadn't copied).

It also didn't occur to me that I could save what I'd done as a separate object and just import it into the last unmangled backup I had... so, I'm currently doing it again that way. This time around I have the "reduce detail" tool, so it's not so bad as the first time

I don't know if it's worth separating the points for LODs, but I can definitely vouch for it catching out people who aren't paying proper attention. Maybe a text warning when you're merging points or using reducing detail in any LOD other than LOD1 might be enough.

Quote from Racon :

I had a little adventure with LOD2, back at the start of modding.....

I had the exact same issue, yes, lots of swearwords
I could rebuild the messy LOD1 because it wasnt using mirrored half car
But now I cant rly touch my LOD2 anymore to get that poly count down, well then, that will be for the next mod.

With Lightwave3D we had kind of same issue when 1 point was shared with 2 polygons that we needed to be separated in an atlas projection UV map.
When we were selecting 1 point to move, the other shared point on the UV map was selected aswell, and we had to be carefull to deselect it before doing things on the first point.
New version added an unweld function that would allow to get quite faster workflow with UV's.

So maybe in editor we could have some function to be able to unweld LOD1 and LOD2, and then weld back those points wich didnt move after we worked on the LODs.