Changing Percent Triangle value in LOD completely breaks mesh

I’m using an asset of a tree in my project that contains way too many triangles, therefore, I would like to change it in my LODs’ settings. However, it completely messes up my mesh. What can I do?

if using the auto lod tools in engine messes up your mesh then you could always create your own custom lods. basically import your mesh into a 3d modeling software and create versions with less polys then re-import the mesh with the custom lods. im sure there are many tutorials out there that will show you step by step. the idea here is that you can control where verticies are eliminated and faces combined so that you have the best looking mesh.

Yeah I knew that was a possibility. But I was wondering if it was possible to do anything in Unreal in order to remedy this situation, even if as a non-optimal plan.
Thanks for the reply.

Unfortunately I don’t think changing the percentage will work in this case. I’ll look into other options then, thank you for your support!

the decimation algorithm that unreal uses isnt the best from what ive heard. its good enough for more simple things but for a tree things can be way more complex. as you show in your picture your mesh gets pretty messed up when you try to run it so theres not a lot of other options that i know of. you could try using a different percentage reduction which could give a different result, like use 29% instead of 30%. that may lead to a better result but maybe not.