December 21, 2004
at 12:31 pm /
#13005
Scott,
While no ‘expert’ by any means, i have learned some tricks to make things work when it comes to LODs.
If your model violates some of those ‘rules’ you listed, then AUTOMATIC LOD generation may well result in MSTS crashing. That does NOT mean CUSTOM LOD’s won’t work however! And, i highly recommend doing custom LODs – you get a whole lot more control over what the different distance levels are, and they really are not that difficult. I did 5 LODs for my new F40, and it only took a couple of hours. The end result is WELL worth the time.
Assuming you are doing custom LODs:
andgt; 1) A part should only be mapped to one ACE…
If you are creating CUSTOM LODs, that is not true. What you can’t easily do though is use the ‘reduce points and faces’ operation. That may result in MSTS crashing. Instead, for each distance level, manually delete faces as much as possible. If it is a large object, like a locomotive body, you probably won’t reduce too terribly much that way, so at some level where you can no longer see the detail, replace that object with a MUCH simpler one that has roughly the same shape.
Here is where it gets a bit ‘tricky’…
If you do end up replacing that object with another, simpler one, it MUST use ALL the textures as the original object, and they need to be mapped in the same order. In other words, if tex-a.ace was mapped before tex-b.ace on the original object, you must do the same order on the replacement. If you don’t get the order right, it WILL still work, but it will look really strange!
andgt; 2) Parts should be grouped in the model hierarchy – as to what ACE the fall on…
That is good advice to get the most polygon reduction, but it is not a requirement for doing Custom LODs.
However, all the textures used in the group MUST still be present in the final distance level. For example, if you have 9 objects using tex-a.ace and 4 objects using tex-b.ace in the original, that same group in the final distance level must have at least two objects in it – one that is mapped with tex-a.ace, and one that is mapped with tex-b.ace.
andgt; 3) You should not mix Specular and Transparency on the same ACE…
Unfortunately, i’m not exactly sure exactly what you are referring to there… However, i have not personally run into any issues with needing transparencies/translucencies separate or anything.
One thing you did miss though – the final LOD MUST contain the same groups as the original, and there must be at least one object (or more than one, based on the above ‘rules’) in each group (which is kind of a given, cause if there weren’t any objects in it, the group would be gone!).
Now that may seem a bit overwhelming at first, but really, it isn’t. Just make sure that all textures present in one group remain in the final distance level of that group, make sure all the original groups are still there, and try to avoid the ‘reduce’ operation on objects with more than one texture mapped to it.
One final word of advice (that i think i found here actually!) – use Paul’s Shape File Viewer to check the model after each export. Click on each distance. If you get to a distance level where the model seems to ‘explode’, there is a problem. USUALLY, if all the distance levels look ok in Shape File Viewer, they’ll work fine in MSTS.
Hope that helps!!
BUZZ
" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –>
" title="Razz" /><!– s:P –> I think they are around 6500… I still need to add a few small items – but given the small loco size – I will not be pulling a 50 car freight train… The polys should work fine…
