InstaLOD for Unity enables you to optimize 3D meshes and scenes from within Unity. Full support for both static and skeletal meshes optimizations as well as complex mesh operations make InstaLOD the ultimate solution for 3D optimization in Unity.
InstaLOD for Unity currently supports all engine versions from 2020 LTS, 2021 LTS to the latest stable version on both Windows PC and macOS.
InstaLOD has been built on Windows using Visual Studio 2019 and requires the installation of the Visual C++ Redistributables for Visual Studio 2019. If you have already installed Visual Studio 2019 or later on your workstation, the installation of the Visual Studio 2019 redistributables is not necessary.
The latest version of InstaLOD for Unity can be found in the InstaLOD License Management Web App under the Your Files
section of the home page.
To get started, copy the InstaLOD
folder to your project's Assets
folder. The next time you will open your Unity project, the InstaLOD plugin will be available.
Before installing the latest version of InstaLOD for Unity, delete the InstaLOD
folder from your project's Assets
folder. Install the latest version of InstaLOD for Unity as described in the previous chapter.
Your workstation needs to be authorized before InstaLOD for Unity can be used. If your machine has already been authorized for InstaLOD you can start using InstaLOD for Unity without further actions.
To authroize your machine, spawn either the InstaLOD
or the InstaLOD Toolkit
window by selecting it from the Window
menu. Enter your license information and press Authorize
to request a license for your workstation.
Once a license has been installed, InstaLOD for Unity is fully operational. Your workstation is now authorized for use with InstaLOD. Make sure to deauthorize your workstation before uninstalling InstaLOD, or you will not be able to authorize another workstation.
It is important to deauthorize your machine before uninstalling InstaLOD for Unity or your seat/node will remain locked.
To deauthorize your workstation, spawn either the InstaLOD
or the InstaLOD Toolkit
window by selecting it from the Window
menu.
Click the ?
tab and select the Deauthorize
to display the deauthorization UI elements.
Enter your license information and press Deauthorize Workstation
to deauthorize your workstation.
Deauthorization takes 24 hours to complete. Until the deauthorization cycle is fully complete, the seat/node will remain locked and cannot be used to activate another machine.
InstaLOD is fully integrated into Unity and all features are now available to you.
All operations run offline and asynchronous inside Unity, so you can keep on working on your scene while your data is being processed.
InstaLOD supports automatic LOD generation for both static and skinned meshes. To create a LOD chain for your game object, select the game object in the viewport or hierarchy and spawn the InstaLOD
window by selecting it from the Window
menu.
If the selected game object has either a Mesh Renderer
or a Skinned Mesh Renderer
assigned, the InstaLOD window will update to prompt you to create a LOD Group
component for the select game object. Once the selected game object has a LOD Group
component assigned, the InstaLOD window will update to display the LOD setup of the game object. By default, a Unity LOD group contains three entries and only the first entry is properly setup with the base mesh.
Press Create missing LODGroup entry
and InstaLOD will automatically create the missing mesh for the selected LOD group entry. By default, newly created LOD group entries are setup to use 50% triangles of the previous LOD group entry.
Therefore, pressing the Create missing LODGroup entry
again to create LOD2
will create another optimization at 25% triangles in relation to the base mesh.
To create additional LOD group entries or modify when individual LOD group entry transitions occur, simply modify the LOD Group
assign to the game object.
Right-clicking the LOD Group
component UI allows you to insert or delete entries, dragging the separator allows you to change when the transition occurs.
All per-game-object InstaLOD settings will be persisted in the InstaLODSettingsComponent
that is automatically assigned to your game object.
By default, InstaLOD will perform a polygon optimization when creating new LOD chain entries. However, InstaLOD for Unity also supports the creation of imposters and remeshed geometry as LOD chain entry by changing the
Mesh Operation
value.
The InstaLOD Toolkit enables Unity developers to perform complex mesh operations inside Unity that are normally only available in DCC tools.
Easily remesh large scenes or 3d scanned data, create high-quality imposters, merge all your scene materials onto a single texture or remove hidden faces from your geometry. Nearly the entire suite of InstaLOD's powerful mesh operations is available, right inside Unity.
To get started, spawn the InstaLOD Toolkit
window by selecting it from the Window
menu.
Select the mesh operation you want to perform and select all meshes that you want to process in the viewport or the hierarchy.
All selected materials and the number of meshes will be displayed in the toolbox.
Configure the settings for the mesh operation and press the confirmation button at the bottom of the window to start the mesh operation.
Please refer to the InstaLOD Pipeline documentation for an overview of all features.
InstaLOD supports vertex color-based optimization weights when performing polygon optimizations.
This is a great way to give artists full control over the optimization.
InstaLOD will only accept vertex color channels that have an empty green channel.
Avoid using both RED and BLUE for a single vertex. If both RED and BLUE colors are used on the same vertex the high color value will determine the weighting type. It is recommended to use pinning instead of culling, to avoid interfering with the optimization strategy of the optimizer.
To enable vertex-based optimization weights, check the Vertex Colors As Weights
checkbox under the Advanced
settings of the Optimize
operation.
InstaLOD automatically creates a folder called InstaLOD Data
inside your projects Assets folder
. This folder contains all mesh, material and texture data that was created by InstaLOD.
Persisting this data to disk is an important step when creating data for Unity, in order to facilitate the creation of prefabs that contains data generated by InstaLOD. It is recommended to purge unused data from the InstaLOD Data
folder from time to time.
Please visit http://www.InstaLOD.com to stay up to date!
Thank you for using InstaLOD.