Looking for trees and bushes with high LOD

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Michael Timeless
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Looking for trees and bushes with high LOD

Post by Michael Timeless »

Due to a childhood spent under the tender loving care of my Uncle Sam (Army), I spent quite a few years hiking the woods of North Carolina. I'm currently trying to recreate the area around Mount Mitchell and the Uwharrie National Forest. Therefore I am looking for a few native trees and plants, specifically Red Spruce and Frasier Fir Trees. Loblolly Pine trees, blackberry and blueberry bushes are also sought.
As silly as this sounds I'm looking for them so that they are viewable at a distance. Unfortunately, most of the mesh plants I've found don't look so good at a distance because of their LOD. I've actually contacted some of the older artists in SL to get some of their old heavy prim trees (which look very good) but cannot find anyone with the specific trees mentioned above. Please contact me if you need a pre-commission fee and we will work something out. These will not be for resale but just for use in this sim.

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Re: Looking for trees and bushes with high LOD

Post by Graham Mills »

More a follow-on question than an answer but I vaguely recall back in the day that some folk used to adjust their viewer LOD settings to give a better experience with sculpties. Does that work with mesh?
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Re: Looking for trees and bushes with high LOD

Post by Zuza Ritt »

Graham Mills wrote:More a follow-on question than an answer but I vaguely recall back in the day that some folk used to adjust their viewer LOD settings to give a better experience with sculpties. Does that work with mesh?
I guess you are right, Graham. I am using RenderVolumeLODFactor set on value 8 and area of 4x4 regions is perfect. At least at 21strom, where I am sure how it should look like:)
Objects using lower LODs are so far, I cannot see them anyway:)
I would recommend to not set value less then 4, unless computer is pretty old; it has no sense to do that at these days.

Michael, you can try that at my 21strom region, you can find the picture at landing point, how to change this setting. Almost all region is made by mesh trees and landscapes, including most of the terrain.

I think to decrease LOD settings during upload is something what we do in SL, where it has significant impact on prim count of object. I would say there is not much meaning of that in OpenSim worlds.
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Re: Looking for trees and bushes with high LOD

Post by Handy Low »

Zuza Ritt wrote:I think to decrease LOD settings during upload is something what we do in SL, where it has significant impact on prim count of object. I would say there is not much meaning of that in OpenSim worlds.
It's not just prim count, though - more polygons (as with higher LOD models) causes more performance problems, especially for people with older and/or low-end hardware.

In fact, that's why Linden Lab have limits on prims and land impact, to try to keep regions running smoothly on as wide a range of hardware as possible.
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Re: Looking for trees and bushes with high LOD

Post by Zuza Ritt »

Handy Low wrote:It's not just prim count, though - more polygons (as with higher LOD models) causes more performance problems, especially for people with older and/or low-end hardware.

In fact, that's why Linden Lab have limits on prims and land impact, to try to keep regions running smoothly on as wide a range of hardware as possible.
I agree it has this effect too, but as a creator I prefer to do my stuff low poly for best performance, but not changing LODs in upload. In OpenSim, I expect better knowledge of users how things work, so when somebody is using virtual world with old hardware, he knows how to tune the system for bearable experience. Like decrease RenderVolumeLODFactor. At the same time, user with good machine can use the same product in intended quality.
In SL I do not expect anything, users are influenced by "superficial" facts like prim count;)
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Re: Looking for trees and bushes with high LOD

Post by Ozwell Wayfarer »

LOD is really an important factor in performance. You wont feel it by just testing one model. But rez 1000 of the same object in a region and you will see a difference.

The problem from a designers perspective is taking into account all the different viewer settings and hardware limitations. In games it is easy, because only a limited amount of information is on-screen at a time, the rest is culled. Games generally have 2 LOD stages. The original object and "far away".

In virtual worlds, where people can ramp up the draw distance (even when their hardware REALLY cant take it, but thats a whole other topic) and cam out to view 9 regions at once, each with thousands of objects rezzed in them.....well, it quickly becomes an impossible proposition for a designer to cope with.

For region owners its even worse. At least in my case, I KNOW my LOD is all done correctly. So if I run into performance issues, I can rule that out by default. But someone who owns a region with items designed by dozens of creators.......how do you know? Is it the LOD? The texture size? The mesh complexity? Some other......thing? Your computer? Who knows! You have some tools in the viewer to find some things out, but its a real crapshoot.

That said, my trees and bushes have a basic LOD model loaded into the "lowest" and "low" slots. Essentially, the same setup as a video game. Nobody has ever told me my trees look deformed at a distance. My RenderLOD is set to 4. But my trees are also designed for people trying to run Opensim on something more powerful than a calculator :). You can see a lot of them at the Kitely Welcome Center, and my newer ones at my Showroom.
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