Blender Simplygon Alternatives - LODs/Vertex Baking/Remeshing/etc

[Rotornut44]

It was announced this morning that Simplygon will be discontinuing their free tier on March 31, 2024. The lowest cost tier is for projects below $100k USD at $5350 per year.
This means that Simplygon is no longer a viable option for many small or solo developers creating for not only MSFS, but other titles, as well as indie developers working on their own games.

I have reached out to Simplygon this morning asking for more information on if they have any plans to introduce more tiers down the road, but I'm not expecting too much to come of it (Edit: Reply was utterly useless and addressed none of my questions or concerns).

In the meantime, I thought it would be a good idea to get a thread going where we could list out some alternatives for the functionality that Simplygon provided. This is everything from LOD generation to Material or Vertex Baking, and Remeshing. Feel free to mention any plugins free or paid that may be worth checking out! I'll try to categorize them here for ease of use.

Note: I haven't personally tested any of these plugins yet. Just starting to dig into it this morning as I find time.

LOD Generation

[Free/Donation] Level Of Detail Generator | Lods Maker
(Thanks rhumbaflappy for linking to this one in another thread)

Level Of Detail Generator | Lods Maker

LODs Maker Addons for Blender - Create Level Of Details in 1 click.

blendermarket.com

Texture/Vertex Baking

[Free] Bake to vertex color

Blender addon - Bake to vertex color

This addon enables you to bake passes like diffuse, emission, ambient occlusion etc to vertex colors. This type of workflow can be really useful when working with game assets. By combining this addon with custom shaders in cycles there are endless possibilites for the type of output that you...

3dbystedt.gumroad.com

 

[chansen]

Hi Chris,

Yes it´s sad that Simplygon wont support us who don´t make big commercial projects now when specially FS2024 supports Simplygon native in their compiler.

I also wrote to them and told them I making freeware scenery, and at their site the mention a license to 35USD, but in their reply they ask for 15K USD and say they dont support small projects ;-(

Haven¨t found a good working LOD way trough Blender yet to support FS2024 on complex buildings.

 

[Reco]

Have any of you tried InstaLOD?

 

[Rotornut44]

Just a small update on this since it has been a while.

I have tried most of the free LOD plugins and almost all of them just use a form of the built-in decimate function of Blender. I never really got any better results, some were even identical. I have not tried any paid addons, but I really don't think there is anything comparable to it. InstaLOD might be the closest from the sound of it, but I haven't applied for their Pioneer license to try it yet. It does say it is free for under $100k income.

I have really just been doing my LODs by hand lately. I'll use a mix of decimate or just dissolving verts and edges by hand. I have found I can usually get better results that way, but of course it takes much longer.

What was really nice about Simplygon was the other tools it came with for creating imposters and remeshing.

Edit: It looks like Dick found that the latest MSFS 2024 SDK comes with a Simplygon License.
https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/simplygon-for-blender.459473/

Edit2: Simplygon is simply gone once again (The License above was invalidated).

 

[Reco]

You have a lot of tools in InstLOD as well, including imposters and remeshing. The only downside is that the Pioneer free version is the stand alone application. You have to pay for the Blender pluggin.

 

[Rotornut44]

I may give it a go sometime here in the near future. Just need to sit down and do it when I have a moment to play around.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

I have a bit of luck within Blender, using the Decimate modifier (Collapse type). Make a bunch of duplicates of the LOD0 collection. rename them as LOD1, LOD2.... Starting with LOD1, select all, use decimate (Collapse) with Ratio of 0.5 Then LOD2 as a ratio of 0,25... and so on. Keep an eye on your statistics, and when the number of faces gets less than 150, that could be your last LOD.

This gives me a good rough LOD set. Then you can replace the COMP textures as needed for lower detailed LODs with metallic and roughness settings. Combine albedo textures on even lower detailed LODs (with new UV maps). Vertex paint the last LOD with no textures. It's not automatic, but it seems to work pretty good.

Here's my LOD xml settings:

This only works for simple models!

A very detailed object might start with LOD Value of 150, then 70, 35....

I think for most hobbyists, a single OLD with a large invisible box works just fine. But if you are going to distribute the scenery, then LODs are better, and I think for the official Marketplace, the LODs are mandatory.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

I think I found a good process for static scenery models: LODsMaker

It makes LODs from 0-5. To make more, run it again with selecting your LOD5, and it will make 5-10. You'll need to rename the LODs as you see fit. And you'll need to make a number of Collections, and move the individual LODs to those collections.

If you make, for example 10 LODs, the last few LODs won't be suitable, so I would delete them. Also, some intermediate LODs will be much too detailed and can be (deleted). The final LOD can have a huge buried invisible plane or an invisible bounding cube, to prevent popping of the final LOD.

In prepping for making LODs, I join all the separate pieces to one object. I then make the LODs, and select, move, delete as needed. Once I have my final set, I go into each LOD at a time. I take the single mesh, go to edit, and under the Mesh tab, I Separate by Material. Now I can turn off the new individual objects and decide if they could be deleted at that LOD. When done, the vertex count can be dramatically reduced for each LOD. You can then join the LOD's separate objects back to one object if desired.

In the end, I get a few LODs, each set having about half the vertices of the previous set. And some have several materials/textures deleted from that LOD. And it just works in MSFS2024.

If you'd like, you could create smaller textures and materials for the smaller LODs, but they need new names, and will increase the number of texture sets in the compiled package. The same with texture baking or vertex coloring. It just increases the size of the package, and I'm not sure that is really good in the sim. Asobo doesn't seem to have many (if any) scenery objects with LOD-based texture sets, and Microsoft doesn't have any for static objects. Microsoft doesn't use any vertex coloring in their objects either. Lots of Microsoft objects have no LODs at all and lead to severe popping of objects.