How important do you guys think LODs are for armor?

[MarkQuinn]

I've imported several armors for my personal mod, many of which have no lod meshes whatsoever.  I've also retextured many of the games armors and at first added lod textures to go with them, but later, through laziness and/or time constraints, said to hell with it and just made the base models ---- no lods.

I'm not really noticing a performance hit over Native where almost all items have a lod counterpart.  Plus, not having them has the added benefit of not seeing the next stage of mesh quality "pop" into the picture as you get closer to a soldier.

Of course, I could be deluding myself.  It might not be noticeable in smaller battles, but maybe in large battles, a performance hit with few to no lods is inevitable?  BTW I don't play with the battle sizer, so I never have that slider above 100.

Can anyone add their thoughts to this?  Anyone who's made mods and added new content, or anyone who's also created new armors but left out the lods?  Have you noticed much change in performance?  Do you feel that a large battle filled with lods will run a LOT smoother than one without any, or do you think the difference is negligible and maybe only worthwhile for slower systems?

 

[Dain Ironfoot]

Depends on lots of factors like polycounts and your computer.

I'd say LODs are incredibly important to performance.

 

[Trooper5445]

Well if you want a truly epic battle or if you have a truly **** computer and you start off a battle with a 100 vs 100 soldiers and you can see all enemy soldiers one could imagine armor LODs could cut about 30-40% of polies needed to be loaded which would probably translate to a 10-15 FPS increase. Of course most of this is just me guessing.

 

[Shik]

IMO, LODs are extremely important. Especially for high-poly outfits and horses.

With a computer like mine, you'll notice a HUGE hit if there's 60 cavalry dudes all wearing complete uniforms that total to over 4000 triangles, plus horses with 3200+ triangles.
That's 7200+ triangles per cavalry dude. Not to mention the weapons.

With proper .lods, you can reduce that significantly. I'll give an example:

the Native hunting_horse has 1500 triangles.
The .lod2 reduces that to 559. The .lod3 reduces that to 100 or so. The .lod4 reduces that to around 50.

Of course, .lods are really only needed for extremely common items. Unique weaponry/armor can do without them.

 

[WilliamBerne]

hehe, I think my mod is the first MnB mod that used so many lods so that it could be as userfriendly as possible.

 

[ealabor]

hehe, I think my mod is the first MnB mod that used so many lods so that it could be as userfriendly as possible.

I generated lod's for Timeless Kingdoms. Granted though much of it is native equipment, although retextured, so the lods had to be retextured as well. Not to mention every equipment piece except some helmets and weapons for the .960 release of 268 B.C. had lods, although I only do lod 2-3.

I'm going to lod whatever I can for the next 268 B.C. thats how important I think they are.

I think it's annoying to pan around and the computer chuggs

 

[Dain Ironfoot]

IMO, LODs are extremely important. Especially for high-poly outfits and horses.

With a computer like mine, you'll notice a HUGE hit if there's 60 cavalry dudes all wearing complete uniforms that total to over 4000 triangles, plus horses with 3200+ triangles.
That's 7200+ triangles per cavalry dude. Not to mention the weapons.

With proper .lods, you can reduce that significantly. I'll give an example:

the Native hunting_horse has 1500 triangles.
The .lod2 reduces that to 559. The .lod3 reduces that to 100 or so. The .lod4 reduces that to around 50.

Of course, .lods are really only needed for extremely common items. Unique weaponry/armor can do without them.

I'm LODing Peninsular now

 

[MarkQuinn]

Well I guess when you guys are releasing your mods you have to be careful to make it playable on a wide range of systems.  I'm really a lazy ass, truly, and I figured since this mod was for me alone and I have the system to run it, why bother?  Reading all of your comments now, I wish I'd done it differently.  And yet I'm only seeing a slowdown at the very beginning of large battles when I'm right next to my army --- but then lods don't come into play there since all the meshes are up close anyway.  Once the battle really gets rolling and units have started to spread out and die, I really don't have any problems.  Then again, knowing I probably made an error in not lodding anything, I also play without grass or dead bodies and that kind of sucks.  After reading all your advice, I'd go back and lod everything but I really don't know how to add new meshes with BRFEdit.  I've tried to do it using the import feature, but then I always get errors in game so ... I guess it's no grass or dead bodies for me.

 

[ealabor]

I'm LODing Peninsular now

Hey!

What about rigging those items 

After reading all your advice, I'd go back and lod everything but I really don't know how to add new meshes with BRFEdit.  I've tried to do it using the import feature, but then I always get errors in game so ... I guess it's no grass or dead bodies for me.

In the very least, make lod3

You can essentially use any piece of armor that's the same color for lod3, and this will be good when panning across big groups of troops at a longer range distance.

At lod4 you can use a very low poly square dinnerplate for a helmet thats how far away it is. Although I really dont do that one since I feel lod3 covers it good enough.