Lower Lods size

Does anyone know if there is an easy way to reduce the size of the lower lods. EG the new FW29 Williams comes with lods 0 993 k - is it possible easily to reduce the 1, 2, 3 etc lower lods with any editor. Only 1 car I have has been provided so far with lower sized lower lods. My processor is a bit limited and have lower level graphics card. To run 25 fps with the current cars etc gives me a PO of over 130 and higher at race start. I have compiled a separate wad for the 1986 mod which is about 85 megs and runs fine on my system. Very grateful if anyone has any suggestions.

delete lods 1,2,3...,you don`t need them, keep only lods 0, in teameditor select the best quality of carshapes, it will increase your PO a your cars.wad will be much smaller

Err.. Increasing PO is what he doesnt want to do. he also said he wants to use lower lods to reduce the po (which it does).

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Only thing I can think of is use Z Moddler and make some, it just takes up time to do it.

i mean decreasing PO, sorry :D

Hi friends!

I have the same problem like you. I have finished today my cars.wad. I have reduced the lods 1, 2, 3 and 4. The only way is to reduce lod 0 with zmodeler.
For example:

With the williams with lod_0 =900kb aprox. I have made a lod_1 about 700kb, a lod_2 of 500kb and then I used lods 3 and 4 of one of the original car of the game. For those lods I have updated the original textures to make them real.

The PO is much better. Around 70-90 frames at the start and around 30-50 during the race.

Try to do it but take your time. To finally make my cars.wad I need a lot of time, practice, and a lot of patiente.

There is a post where is told the way to reduce lods with zmodeler. Use the search button and write "lower lods" or something like that. You will find posts with the solution.

A very happy racing from spain!!!

Well I deleted lods 1,2,3 and it crashed because it needed the other jaguar lods and when I put them in all the cars took the shape of the STR2.

and about this solution? someone already tried? => [www.grandprixgames.org]

Öggo Wrote:
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> Great car, guys! As always! Really impressive
> work!
> Erik, one thing about lods. You made the car with
> Max, so you should know there's a modifier named
> MultiRes. I use it to make lods for my cars.
> Actually I create lod1 just by deleting z_cockpit
> objects from the car. Then I pick lod1, import it
> into Max and apply the MultiRes modifier with 75%
> Vert Percent for lod 2, 50% for lod 3 and 25% for
> lod4 as indicative values. Export everything back
> to Zmod, some renaming et voilà, lods done!
> You'll get some messed up normals on the lods,
> indeed. But you actually wouldn't notice that that
> much, since you're having them only for lods 2, 3
> and 4.
> It's worth a try imho! That would make this car
> even greater!
> And to everyone complaining about the textures: 4
> 1024 texs equal 1 2048 tex. Actual cars normally
> have 1 2048 tex + 1 1024 interior tex sometimes +
> 1 256 carb tex. So, total texture size of this car
> is moreless the same than any other car
-------------------------------------------------------

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the thing is for shapers, lods aren't the most exciting thing, the high-polied detailed shapes are what we delight in, so getting rid of the detail, remaking some parts and remapping after you've finished your car isn't doesn't have the same motivation! I've decided to use the original lods for lower lods 3 & 4 to save time, last year I made a box thing for them, but it's just a quick solution for me who doesn't have max.

But don't you need 3D Max to do that not ZModeler, thats what I get from it anyways.

What Oggo is saying is that max has an option to do it with one click, in zmodeler you need real modelling skills and takes much much longer

i deleted lods 1,2,3,4 and the low tex only 0 on car lods and hi_tex and use TeamEditor/carshapes/hi quality settings(Use lod0 only)and check force best carshapes, my car.wad is only 107MB with the all 2007 cars and 2D tires

fongu Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What Oggo is saying is that max has an option to
> do it with one click, in zmodeler you need real
> modelling skills and takes much much longer


Yep, indeed Kev. That's exactly what I wanted to say with that post. Making lods that way has its problems though, as I've also explained there. But if you have Max, it's worth a try.

I may come to you with help on lods in the future then

Thank you for all your suggestions. I tried the 0 lods only and force best carshapes in Team Editor. It reduced the size of the cars.wad but made no difference with the PO. I guess because the program is still reading lod 0 5 times instead of 1-4 lods? Only thing I can think of. Presumably £D Max is not the kind of program an amateur is going to get involved with?

it's more of a money thing for most...

try this...

delete lod 0...
then rename lod 1 to 0
then lod 2 to 1...
then lod 3 to 2
then lod 4 to 3
when you get to lod 4 just use lod 3 again & name it lod 4.
confusing but has effect...
try for one car & check in game...
make sure your not running game with huge lod helmets also...

Thanks for explaining it fongu, I guess I will continue to use Z Modeler to make lower lods

Jimbob1 procedure could be a little problematic if we don´t pay atention to internal LOD structure... LOD 0 contains 28 parts instead of the normal 24 parts as the rest of lods (except of LOD 4 that is only 1 part named "cockpit_low"... the 4 extra parts on LOd 0 are the ones that start with "z_" and are mainly the mirrors and visor, so if you use LOD 1 (without those "z_" parts) instead of LOD 0, on Tcam view your mirrors won´t work.

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kev was totally right about making a detailed car, as good as possible. and afterwards you have to get rid of all details again for lower lods,....
but i´d still like to see cars with proper lower lods, ´cause the game needs it, if you don´t have the best or newest pc.
all the remaining capacity should go to the physics engine, to get the best "driving" effect.
so diego´s way of making lods it´s quite easy and shapers can prepare lower lods for the cars.
i still prefer the "old-fashioned" (z-mod) way to get the best effect, but this takes more time...

matt