LOD Tool for the “Parts” Pipeline
Professional - Senior Technical Artist - Kerbal Space Program 2
Summary
The Parts-Team needed an automated process for created Level of Details for their models. With hundreds of parts already built in the game, and hundreds more planned to be built, LODs are essential.
Houdini Engine is used within Unity to generate new models with a lower polygon count than the original. But to prevent users from getting bogged-down by issues that can arise when working with the Houdini Engine plugin, a front-end tool and UI was developed in Unity to hide the Houdini Engine plug-in, relegating it to a background process.
The Work
I picked up the LOD tool that had already been built by fellow tech artist, and expanded its functionality to also process Parts-Team assets. (Up to this point, the LOD tool was being used only by the Environment team.)
The challenge for Parts assets is that these models/prefabs can be quite complex. Their setup has evolved over the course of KSP’s existence, so each asset is different depending on when it was authored. Some have nested prefabs within its setup, and some are animated with complex rigs where transforms preservation is important for its functionality.
To get the LOD tool to work for the Parts pipeline, it needed to be re-written to account for the eccentricities of parts models:
Inconsistent prefab and model setup.
Animated prefabs.
Nested prefabs.
Automated LOD Group component setup
Appendix
Fellow tech artist Jon Cioletti created the LOD tool originally, and successfully implemented it into the environment team’s pipeline. A shift in development priorities meant he had to move to other projects before being able to tackle the LOD issue for the parts team. I picked up the tool from there to continue its development.
Kerbal Space Program 2’s ‘Discoverables’ are difficult to find locations in the Kerbol system.