LOD pictures

Numbers tell you how many triangles a LOD keeps; a picture tells you whether it still looks right. LOD Tailor renders every LOD of a mesh from the same camera, like a Content Browser thumbnail, so you can compare them side by side. Nanite meshes show their fallback mesh and its LODs: what targets without Nanite draw.

In the panel

Select a mesh on the Meshes page. The LOD pictures section of the mesh details shows one square picture per LOD, with its number and triangles under it, for example “LOD 2 · 4,032”. Hover a picture to see its triangles and draw calls.

• The pictures are rendered right after you select the mesh, so selecting stays quick; a spinner shows while they are rendered. They don’t wait for shaders that are still compiling.
• The panel keeps the pictures of the last 16 meshes. After a batch run or a restore changes a mesh’s LODs, its pictures are rendered again.
• A long chain wraps to the next line.

In the HTML report

The HTML report has a LOD pictures section: one card per mesh with its name, its path and a strip of its LODs, each with its number, “imported”, “merged” or “fallback” where that applies, its triangles and its draw calls. In the Meshes table, a pictures link next to the mesh name jumps to its card.

• Only meshes with more than one LOD get pictures, those with the most triangles first, up to Max Picture Meshes (default 50).
• Each picture is 160 by 160 pixels.
• The pictures are JPEG images inside the HTML file, so the report stays one file you can send on its own.
• Before rendering, the report waits for mesh builds and shaders to finish, and a progress dialog shows when it takes longer than a second.

Settings

Setting	Default	Meaning
LOD Pictures in the Report	Enabled	Adds the LOD pictures section to the HTML report.
Max Picture Meshes	50	How many meshes get pictures in the report, from 1 to 1000.

Both are in Project Settings > Plugins > ta LOD Tailor > Files. The pictures in the panel can’t be turned off.

Command line

Pictures are rendered in the editor; commandlets skip them unless they run with -AllowCommandletRendering (and without -NullRHI), and then picture static meshes only. Skeletal meshes get pictures in the editor. A commandlet run says so in its log, for example “LOD pictures: 3 skeletal meshes are left out. Commandlets picture static meshes only; skeletal meshes are pictured in the editor.”, and in the report’s LOD pictures section: “Skeletal meshes get pictures in the editor only, not in a commandlet run.” -NoPictures leaves the pictures out of the report in any case.

UnrealEditor-Cmd.exe "C:\Path\MyGame.uproject" -run=TALODTailor -Report=Docs/LODReport -AllowCommandletRendering -unattended -nop4 -nosplash

Note

Without a graphics device the report is complete apart from the LOD pictures section, and the panel shows no LOD pictures section in the mesh details.

Python

import unreal

tailor = unreal.get_editor_subsystem(unreal.TALODTailorSubsystem)
mesh = unreal.load_asset("/Game/Props/SM_Barrel_LODs")

if tailor.can_render_lod_pictures():
    files = tailor.save_lod_pictures(mesh, "Saved/LODPictures", 256)
    print(files)

save_lod_pictures(mesh, folder, size=160) renders every LOD of a static or skeletal mesh into JPEG files named after the mesh, for example SM_Barrel_LODs_1a2b3c4d_LOD0.jpg, and returns them in LOD order. A relative folder starts at the project folder, and the size is limited to 32 to 1024 pixels. Like the report, it waits for mesh builds and shaders first. can_render_lod_pictures() is False without a graphics device. In a commandlet it pictures static meshes only.

For the report, the export options lod_pictures, max_picture_meshes and picture_size (64 to 512) control the pictures, and the export result’s lod_pictures counts them. See Python.