I've tried it in several situations and when everything is in place it works very well and reduces lod creation times.. The first step, merge vertices by distance, merges neighboring vertices within a certain distance. Especially in older 3D models, or in those with an incorrect topology, rather annoying distortions are created, in some cases even serious ones (1) . All this happens due to the alteration of the topology of the model. With just the first step, taking TVR as an example, exactly this happens. If we then decimate the model, the situation gets worse: we will have decimated a disaster, obtaining a double disaster (2). Furthermore, it would still be necessary to manually eliminate all the useless meshes for that lod, so specific work would still need to be done. Every time I've had to create a lod, I've never been lucky. 🙁
1. Merge vertices by distance
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2. Decimate modifier
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