Chapter21.Controlling the Level of Detail

Chapter 21. Controlling the Level of Detail

In many modern games today, an artist (or more likely a group of artists) designs content. Most times, this content is quite large and has a significant amount of detail built into the model, which might be necessary to view when you're up close to the model. However, when the model is not close to the camera, having all that detail, which the user will never see anyway, is somewhat of a waste.

As they say, the fastest polygon to draw is the one that you don't. In this chapter, you will look at several techniques you can use to control this level of detail.

In this chapter, you'll learn

• How to simplify a mesh

• When to use a simplification mesh

• How to use a progressive mesh