Tips For Production Use

01Choose The Process By Bottleneck

Start with the cost you need to remove. A mesh with too many triangles, a kitbash prop with too many materials, and a city block with too many hidden interior faces are three different problems.

02Set Targets Artists Can Understand

You get to enjoy the raw SDK settings - artists shouldn't have to. A good tool speaks intent ("Far LOD", "merge this prop"), and quietly maps that to whichever target type actually fits. Nobody painting a character wants to learn what "max deviation" means, and they shouldn't need to. For reference, the four target types and where each earns its keep:

• Triangle ratio: good for predictable test passes and simple batch processing.
• Triangle count: good when a platform budget gives you hard numbers.
• On-screen size: good for LOD chains because the target relates to perceived screen coverage.
• Max deviation: good when silhouette error matters more than a fixed triangle count.

Build presets around the review language your team uses:

03Treat Materials As First-Class Data

A lot of disappointing Simplygon results are material problems, not triangle problems. A reduction can look great in gray shaded mode and still fail because roughness, normals, opacity, vertex colors, or custom shader data got lost.

• List required channels per asset type before creating casters.
• Use consistent channel names across exporters, DCCs, and engine importers.
• Test tangent-space normal baking on assets with hard edges and mirrored UVs.
• Keep hero materials separate when shader features can't be baked safely.
• Use multiple output materials if one atlas would become too large or too blurry.
• Compare material count, texture memory, and shader complexity before and after processing.

REQUIRED_CASTERS = {
 "static_prop": ["Diffuse", "Normals", "Roughness", "Metalness"],
 "foliage": ["Diffuse", "Normals", "Opacity"],
 "emissive_prop": ["Diffuse", "Normals", "Emissive"],
 "vertex_color_asset": ["Diffuse", "Normals", "VertexColors"],
}

04Visibility Settings Need Real Cameras

Visibility culling and visibility-weighted reduction are only as good as the view data you give them. A pretty screenshot camera is not gameplay coverage.

• Use gameplay camera paths, not marketing cameras, for visibility decisions.
• Keep occluder selection sets explicit and reviewable.
• Don't cull geometry destructively until you know all traversal paths and cinematic cameras.
• For open-world assets, build separate presets for player-height, aerial, cinematic, and map-view cameras if needed.

05Characters Need Animation Review

Character LODs are not done just because the bind pose looks fine. Skinning, blend shapes, modular seams, attachments, cloth, and extreme poses all need review.

• Test reductions on idle, locomotion, attack, emote, facial, and extreme-pose clips.
• Preserve important seams between modular parts, especially heads, hands, armor, and clothing.
• Use bone reduction carefully. Far LODs can use fewer bones, but socketed props and gameplay attachments may depend on specific joints.
• Check normal and tangent changes on skin under animation, not only in a static viewport.
• Keep a per-character visual regression set: close camera, mid camera, far camera, and silhouette-only view.

06Batch Safely

Batch processing is where Simplygon becomes pipeline infrastructure, and where tiny assumptions can turn into hundreds of broken assets. Build the batch runner like something people will depend on.

07Review With Before-And-After Numbers

Visual inspection matters, but it's not enough. Every processed asset should carry a small report.

• Original and processed triangle count.
• Original and processed material count.
• Output texture count, dimensions, and estimated memory.
• Processing preset and SDK version.
• Warnings and errors from the Simplygon log.
• Image or viewport captures from standard review angles.

08Troubleshooting Bad Results