My second newbie question : does UE4 support additive LOD?
For example if I have a building that I want to come on at 200m, but I want the window frames or steps to come on a 100m and the door knobs to come on at 50m - how do I do that?
I read this excellent tutorial (LODs) on what I would call “swap” LOD but I need to do additive - so stuff gets added instead of making the building three times and just swapping in versions with more and more stuff (which is pretty inefficient)
I have been struggling with this too. I want to import a vehicle model like a tank with different number of LODs for different parts. I don`t them to be imported as separate static meshes. How can I do that. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Chrisell and abhishek17,
Additive LODs are not a part of the engine that I’m aware of. I did try and search and only found a single page that barely described it. If you’ve got more sources or can references any where this is used that I can research, I can see about putting in a feature request for this. It seems like an interesting concept.
We have recently introduced our Hierarchical LOD system starting with 4.8 and improvements here in 4.9 that sounds similar, but I’ve not messed with it enough yet to know for sure this is all that similar to your description.
We don’t have any direct documentation on this system yet, but you can check the release notes for 4.8 and 4.9 to see how to enable it and some of the settings it provides.
4.8: What's New | Unreal Engine 5.1 Documentation
4.9: What's New | Unreal Engine 5.1 Documentation
Thank you!
Tim
Tim.
The hierarchical LOD doesn’t look like it’s quite what I’m looking for.
The idea would be that you build a model in 3ds max (for example) and build an LOD group for the base of the tank that had maybe two LODs in it. Then you’d build an LOD group for the turret that had maybe 4 LODs in it. Link the turret to the body and export to FBX and import into Unreal. Problem right now is that Unreal doesn’t like that so the only way to do it currently is to export the turret as one FBX and and the base as another, then import them as two independent static meshes and either group or socket them together in UE.
This method of complex, separated LODs would have the benefit that you can swap out just individual parts of an asset without having to change the entire thing. So for example rather than have a house asset where the HLOD has all the detail, then the next lower LOD is basically a duplicate but with some things stripped off, with the separated LOD idea the “base” house never changes but the handles, window frames, moldings, mailboxes etc all just get “added on” as you get closer.
Specifically the other way I’d like to use this is to add detail to a rail vehicle. So I’d have the base carriage mesh but then an additive LOD that scabs on all the door handles, handrails, footplanks and other details when I get closer. Same for the wheel trucks - a base mesh for the wheel truck (bogie) but then an additive LOD that adds in the springs, bolts, hoses and other details only when I’m really close.
To be clear, I CAN do this now with the multiple FBX export/import process but it would be nice if I could just put all this structure in my source MAX file and export the FBX all in one go.