How closely does LOD work tie into manufacturer style guides? Does knowing what makes a MISC ship a MISC ship help you create LODs for say the Freelancer and Starfarer more quickly or does it make little difference?asked by Amontillado
TL;DRLODs are built from the ship's geometry rather than manufacturer style guides, though keeping the silhouette matters and style indirectly affects difficulty, since blockier ships are easier to LOD than rounded ones.
Well actually not really much at all. The concept for the ship and the main base ship and everything that makes it up is based on the Manufacturer Style Guides. LODs are based on the actual geometry for the ship itself and the best way to optimise that down to a level where we can include it with all the other ships and maintain high performance.So LODs aren't really based on style guides. You might, you might try, you obviously want to keep the silhouette of the ship and keep it looking like, you don't want it to just look blocky. So if this ship has these nice curves along the edges you don't want the LODs to just block them out or chop them up, you want them to maintain that shape.
Right. I mean what that does mean though for LODs there are some ship styles that are more difficult to deal with, because of that. So a very blocky ship, generally speaking a very blocky ship, would be easier to LOD because you wouldn't notice the changes in the surfaces as much as you would as a ship that's a little bit more rounded, so yeah. Style Guides don't affect it, but the Style Guide does, indirectly affect, how hard it is to make the LOD for it.
Correct.