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Level of detail and clones
My massive cloner project is starting to push the limits of my box and gfx card (and neither are slouches). So I thought “hey, I’ll turn down the level of detail in the viewport to make the working experience faster). But once I get off “High” the clones disappear. Is this a feature? bug? Limitation? Is there a way around it? I’ve tried it with OGL on and off.
My rig is fast enough I ‘ve never actually turned this down for any project and here I am taking advantage for the first time and.. nada.
Advice? -
6 Replies
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reducing the number of clones in a cloner is the default behaviour and it works well if you have a lot of clones (hundreds) in a cloner – if you have fewer clones it’s pretty abrupt (the math must not be linear because it’s hard to see a difference between 100% of the clones and 80% for example) and the viewport settings of Low, Medium, High are pretty big jumps and with a grid cloner test of a 3x3x3 grid cloner all the clones will disappear when you go from High to Med but if you have a 20x20x20 cloner the levels work pretty well.
If you want fewer clones to appear more reliably use the Project settings Level Of Detail with values from 0 – 100% (though with too few clones that’s still awfully quick but you can get reduction with a 3x3x3 cloner by going to 99%)
Or you can use a Display tag on a cloner where you can get a cloner specific LOD.
You can also put a Display tag on an object within a cloner and reduce it’s LOD (keep the numbers of clones but have simpler clones to display)
Or combine them, display tag on the cloner to reduce numbers and a display tag on the clone source to reduce it’s display complexity -
Hi Brian,
Thanks for that. I did try a display tag on the child inside the cloner without reasonable results and a display tag on the cloner itself. I do want simpler clones with all the clones showing. But I’ve been unable to find the right combo to get that done.
Is there another way besides the display tag?
I figured the level of detail would reduce the geometry shown, not eliminate entire objects. -
Display tag on the child should not reduce numbers in the cloner only clone complexity but if the object is really simple it doesn’t do much (ie a LOD change (even to 0%) on a cube does nothing since it can’t get visually simpler)
LOD does reduce clones by default when applied system wide (with the project setting or the viewport options) the only way around that is the display tag on the cloner child(ren) that I know of (or replacing the children with simpler proxy objects) -
Right.
I think I see the problem. I’ve got some fairly high poly geom inside the cloner that I thought would be visually tesselated down by a LOD tag on the child iteself. And I was also disapointed that the global LOD turned off entire clone chains instead reducing individual object complexity etc.
What I’ve only now thought to try is to check to see if the project level LOD works on my base geometry – it does not. So what exacly is the criteria for detail reduction in the LOD function? Does it only work on parametrics? (my stuff is mix of poly and “live” parametric objects but I’m not seeing a reduction in detail in either.)
If not number of poly’s in the view port, what “detail” is actually being reduced? Is it only able to reduce the number of objects?
I would have thought a great use for the LOD is to speed up interaction in the viewport and to do that the system would only display ever nth poly or vertex – that sort of approach. I didn’t think it would work by displaying every nth object.
Have I just been thinking about this wrong? I’m just looking to speed up the redraw as I need to scrub to check interactions etc but I end up getting a blank viewport until I stop moving the playhead. -
yeah, the help does say Primitives, Metaballs or all Generator objects, I think you’d have to use the Polygon Reduction Deformer on poly objects but they’d have to be turned off for render (Layer or selection object I guess) (and maybe not since it’s a deformer and would be working in real time – maybe R19’s Poly Reduction generator…)
R19 LOD looks interesting and does have decimation etc but no demo’s on clones I notice… -
Actually I hadn’t thought of that (deformer). Good idea. I’ll just stick a script in there that I can turn on and off all of them with a single button.
Cheers
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