Mesh LODThe Level Of Detail (LOD) technique is an optimization that reduces the number of triangles that Unity has to render for a GameObject when its distance from the Camera increases. More info
See in Glossary reduces the number of polygons Unity has to draw and provides automatic LOD creation.
Mesh LOD creates LODs automatically on model import and stores each LOD in the index buffer of the original meshThe main graphics primitive of Unity. Meshes make up a large part of your 3D worlds. Unity supports triangulated or Quadrangulated polygon meshes. Nurbs, Nurms, Subdiv surfaces must be converted to polygons. More info
See in Glossary. For more information about LOD generation, refer to the following pages:
At runtime, the Mesh LOD feature selects the appropriate LOD automatically depending on the size of the mesh on the screen, project-wide and per-object Mesh LOD settings. For more information, refer to Mesh LOD runtime quality.
When generating LODs automatically, Unity does not create new GameObjectsThe fundamental object in Unity scenes, which can represent characters, props, scenery, cameras, waypoints, and more. A GameObject’s functionality is defined by the Components attached to it. More info
See in Glossary or components. This means that the Mesh LOD feature only optimizes the workload for rendering geometry, and does not provide options for configuring material or Mesh RendererA mesh component that takes the geometry from the Mesh Filter and renders it at the position defined by the object’s Transform component. More info
See in Glossary settings for less detailed LODs. Being focused on geometry optimization, the feature provides a smaller memory footprint compared with the LOD Group feature.
The Mesh LOD feature has the following limitations:
The following systems do not support Mesh LOD selection. These systems always select LOD0 with the Mesh LOD feature.
Entities Graphics
Particle System
Visual Effect Graph
Mesh LOD supports the LOD cross-fade feature only when the GPU Resident Drawer is enabled in a project.
When Mesh LOD generates LODs for models with a Skinned Mesh Renderer component, the generator does not take skin weights or blend shape deformations into account during the mesh simplification process. As a consequence, the LOD generator may remove indices that refer to vertices that are important for the intended mesh deformation. For more information, refer to Skinned Mesh Renderer deformation artifacts.
Using Mesh LODs with Skinned Mesh Renderers does not reduce the workload related to calculating mesh deformations. When performing deformations, a Skinned Mesh Renderer deforms LOD0 regardless of which LOD index Unity is currently using for rendering a mesh.
Mesh LOD only supports meshes with triangle topology.
Unity doesn’t provide functionality to visualize which Mesh LOD index is being rendered.
Using Mesh LOD in combination with LOD Group might lead to unexpected outcomes and is not recommended.
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