Hi folks,
I used UE4 to produce imposter spites, I created a material and finally created a sprite that uses this material. All works well. When I put the sprite in the scene focus on it and rotate around it looks real great. Just like the realm model in flat. Would be totally ok if the model is far away.
But now I stuck. How can I assign it as LOD Level to a static mesh. This might be obvious if you know it, but I don’t.
A static mesh always wants to import a LOD level as fbx or obj. And even in a Blueprint I have no events from a static mesh that indicate a screensize threshold reached (or I haven’t found it).
I do not want to give each model a tick and end up calculating distance to the camera each frame. That would be an awesome waste of resources, because I am on mobile. And we are talking about hundreds of asteroids here.
So help please: How do I actually use the 3D Imposter Sprites as LOD Level. Creating is no problem, but using.
Thanks in advance,
Hi,
What if, instead of using a sprite you use a simple Plane.fbx ? You should be able to assign it to your static mesh of asteroid as LOD. I guess you’ll have to make a single material for both Lod and not LOD.
Don’t think it’s a great idea but it’s a way to bypass your issue
Hi Beach,
thanks for your reply. I tried this before I finally found the sprite solition.
I should have mentioned it above, but I have invested many hours in trying to use the imposter sprite material with a plane as LOD. The documentation stops right after the material description, so this was the most obvious use for me too.
But with the same material on a plane, especially on a plane as LOD level it does not work for me. Most times it shows the wrong angle, especially if the mesh has a roll angle. Also it is problematic to allign the scale of the plane and the pivot point. In the actual game, the plane does not even align to the camera vector, so it is a visible plane, somehow rotated.
If you know how to make it work with a plane as good as it works with a sprite, I would be happy to know how. Possible that I made a mistake somewhere.
Hey MarcelBlanck,
If you would like to add a level of detail to your ‘Plane’ mesh, simply import the LOD Mesh (Simplified Plane) within the Static Mesh editor window, and assign the material you created.
If you go on the Learn tab and take a look at the ‘Landscape Mountains’ sample project, the pine trees they use for the billboard sprite should give you a good idea of how to approach this LOD set up.
Let me know if you are still having issues after trying some of the suggested steps.
Thank you,
Hey MarcelBlanck,
If you would like to add a level of detail to your Asteroid mesh, import the LOD as the .fbx plan mesh, and assign to it the material you created.
If you go on the Learn tab and take a look at the ‘Landscape Mountains’ sample project, the pine trees they use for the billboard sprite should give you a good idea of how to approach this LOD set up.
Let me know if you are still having issues after trying some of the suggested steps.
Thank you,
Thanks for the support Andrew, it works now with a plane as LOD level mesh. Don’t know exacly what I did wrong before.
But I have one last issue when moving away from the mesh: It pops a little when going in LOD 3 where the imposter sprite does it’s magic.
I use a 1:1 plane.fbx for this. Scaling it did not help. Do you have any advise to get a perfect smooth, at at least less recognizeable transition to the imposter LOD?
Help would be really appreciated, you know how many asteroids are out there in space…
