What are LODs? LODs are Levels Of Detail on a mesh. The point of LODs is to save processing power by not rendering unnecessary vertices and faces on a model.
This is sort of an extreme example below, but you should be able to understand the basic idea, depending on distance, you can see that certain vertices are not needed.
This is sort of an extreme example below, but you should be able to understand the basic idea, depending on distance, you can see that certain vertices are not needed.
Unity 5 has a nice feature that enables LOD's easily with a component called LOD group. If you create a layered model with different levels of details and import into them Unity you get this... A parent you can use to control your LODs.
Once you add a LOD Group component, you can drag the camera between the different LOD levels and add the correct model for that view. If you zoom back and forth on the parent in the scene you will see it automatically adjust based on the camera distance. All in all, this is a nice feature that Unity added to help optimize your game, don't forget to take advantage of it!