New Creator: Help with Prop LOD

[Kearsarge 4]

Hey, Everyone! This is my first post about my first asset.

I've recently uploaded my first asset, and by design its huge. Its a large gantry crane, often found in shipyards (hopefully soon to be integrated into a shipyard asset I'll create):

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1091998588&searchtext=shipyard+crane

Commenters are asking for a prop version, Which I would like to be able to provide, but the game's prop LOD distance definitely isn't suited to something this big; you have to be nearly inside the model to get the high-resolution version. I thought seeing the LOD most of the time just looks bad, and at really large distances, it outright disappears.

Is there a way to change the LOD distance for props? I've edited the "m_maxrenderdistance" setting, though it seems to automatically reset. I found a comment from Boformer explaining that the LOD distance is defined by the asset surface area. Are people creating huge invisible underground blocks with large props to increase face area, or is there another way to edit the distance I haven't found? Do I need to improve my LOD model and live with the small distance?

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions. Clearly, I'm relatively new to this, so anything, no matter how basic is useful.

[Miccrosshill 367]

you can suggest the Adaptive Prop Visibility Distance mod in the decription.

 

as i know a lot of the values can be edited via ModTools but arent saved. nice work btw.

[Ronyx69 2,413]

The render distances are calculated live, you can't set your own.

Use the mod.

As for culling issues - the prop will disappear when looking away from the center, to fix this create an invisible infinitely thin triangle which exceeds both the height and width of the prop, this will make the  game think it's bigger and it won't disappear as easily.

[Kearsarge 4]

Thanks for the advice, both of you. Some part of me was hoping to avoid that kind of dependency, but I guess that's what you have to do.

Good tip on the looking at/away factor, Ronyx, I didn't know about that.

Also, I love you work, both of you. Keep it up.