InstaLODADVERTORIAL
SIGGRAPH 2019Since World of Tanks launched on
consoles in 2014, Wargaming has
added over 900 tanks to the popular
game. Generating this amount of
content and optimising it to run on
the decade-old hardware of the
Xbox 360 is no mean feat. The tank
optimisation process took an average
of two to three days per tank, and a
typical monthly update for their title
could require anywhere from four to
over 100 tanks to be reprocessed by a
team of three artists.
Much of this heavy lifting has
been taken care of by InstaLOD’s
remeshing and optimisation features.
Both InstaLOD’s remeshing and
optimisation can handle skinned
meshes, meaning artists were able
to save valuable time not having
to reskin tanks that had complex
suspension rigs.
After integrating InstaLOD into
their pipeline to make full use of
automation, the studio was able to
cut the time to a mere four hours.
“InstaLOD allows us to spend more
time on making the art look the best
that it can and less time optimising,”
says TJ Wagner, executive producer.
“It has become an important facet to
our tank production pipeline.”WAR GAMES
How InstaLOD supercharged a AAA
game studio’s asset pipeline and
brought one of their blockbuster
titles to multiple platformsat heavily reduced time and cost per
game asset.
Bluepoint has also automated the
creation of LODs in their pipeline by
integrating the InstaLOD C++ SDK. The
inline nature of their pipeline allows the
artists to simply export their highest-
level model, and an automated system
will generate the necessary assets on a
separate set of servers.
In an effort to reduce the number
of draw calls per scene, Bluepoint has
developed an automated method for
combining multiple assets into one. The
automated system picks up these new
combo models and leverages InstaLOD
to produce a highly optimised asset. This
provides the artists with another method
of kit-bashing larger models into different
configurations, further improving efficiency
and productivity.
3D WITH STYLE
Deckers Brands’ fashion and performance
lifestyle footwear has earned a global
reputation for unparalleled style, quality
and comfort. Their portfolio boasts the
likes of UGG, Hoka One One, Teva and
Sanuk, while their products are sold in
more than 50 countries. Over the past
three years, Deckers have taken steps to
modernise their commercial presence.
In order to streamline their design and
development process, the company
turned to CAD modelling. Relying on
3D processes enables Deckers to reduce
the time and cost of producing high-
quality footwear.
One of the challenges inherent in
CAD-based workflows is the large
number of polygons involved, which
can make using the resulting assets
downstream for e-commerce applications
or VR/XR experiences a painful process.
This is due to the need to have low-
polygon assets for both data delivery and
real-time visualisations. The requirement
for high visual fidelity coupled with a
desire to target a wide spectrum of
devices meant Deckers needed a solution
to automatically process large amounts
of data without compromising on
visual quality.
The team was delighted by InstaLOD’s
ability to quickly produce beautiful
tessellations and once the digital shoe
was refined to a workable mesh, the team
began experimenting with the ground-
breaking remeshing technology. At the
push of a button, a complete retopology
could be achieved. On top of that, a large
number of materials were automatically
reduced to a single one.
With their new pipeline now in place,
Deckers can quickly adapt any of their
products’ CAD data to every platform,InstaLODADVERTORIAL
SIGGRAPH 2019