LODs for lowpoly assets

Hello friends!

I am working on a low poly game. Is having lods that would, for example, cut a 280 vert wall mesh into a 118 vert mesh, worth it? The transition isn't very pretty, and it makes the whole workflow a lot more painful.

I know that (in general) the number of vertices isn't a big deal for the GPU, and I'm assuming instead of working so hard on such a minimal problem I should instead focus on more important things, such as batches.

From tests I have done, I'm thinking I'll only do lods for barrels and other fancy things, since my houses are pretty simple...

 

Hey,
Well it depends on the plateform you're developping on. If you're developping on Android, LODs are to me essentials. But if you're not on Android, 280 verts instead of 118 verts isn't a big deal. Except the case that you have a loooooot of these models in your scene, i think LODs aren't very helpfull in you case.

Anyway, test with and without LOD, check the profiler and decide by yourself because it actually depends on lot of things.

 

I say no. Fous on implementing important mechanics and features rather than worrying about optimization - before lack of optimization is an issue. Programmers coined the term premature optimization which I think is both funny and also pointed.
If resources become tight consider other optimization tactics before lod-ing with such a small result. Saving 100 verts/tris, even over 1000 meshes wont result in more than roughly 2-3 fps increase at most. Better to consider other optimization solutions.

 

That's not to bad tbh, I'm taking into consideration using lods on lower poly mesh for people that aim for mobile , as an asset creator, I want to please the large majority but I'm still wondering if its even worth it myself. I have meshes under 1000 tris and I'm not yet sure if I should or should not be doing it on them: https://forum.unity.com/threads/are-lods-on-low-poly-mesh-worth-it.781640/