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How to Create LOD (Level of Detail) for Your Splat

This guide explains how to create a LOD of your Splat using the one-click feature in Arrival.Space.

Need More Control?

If you have individual .ply files or want finer control over LOD settings, check out the Manual LOD Creation Guide (CLI) for an alternative approach using the splat-transform command-line tool.

TL;DR​

  1. Upload your Splat file (.ply, .compressed.ply, .sog, or .lcc as zip)
  2. Click Generate LOD in the Content List Detail View
  3. Tune your LOD settings (presets, ranges)
  4. Generate a Collision

1. Upload Your Splat File​

Before generating LOD, you need to upload your splat asset to Arrival.Space. Supported formats:

FormatHow to Upload
.plyUpload directly
.compressed.plyUpload directly
.sogUpload directly
.lcc / .zipMust be zipped together with its companion files (.lci, .bin files) - detailed information can be found in section Upload LCC to Arrival.Space.
meta.json / .zipIf you created your LOD manually using the CLI (see Manual LOD Creation Guide), upload your LOD output folder as a zip file containing the lod-meta.json and all chunk files.
Sample Data

For valid example files, check out the XGRIDS Sample Data — all samples are provided as ready-to-upload zip files.

2. Generate LOD​

One-Click LOd GenerationDefine Settings for LOD Generation

Once you have uploaded your asset and created a collision, you will find the Generate LOD button below your asset information 1. Clicking this button opens a submenu 2, where you can configure the following settings:

  • LOD Levels:
    Defines how many Levels of Detail should be generated. The amount of the levels are automatically set for LCC splats.

  • Gaussians per Chunk:
    Specifies the approximate number of Gaussians each chunk should contain. This value is an approximation — the actual count may vary slightly.

  • Chunk Extent:
    Specifies the spatial size (in meters) of a chunk. This should be adjusted based on the scale of your scanned environment.

After configuring these settings, click Start Generation to generate your LOD. Depending on the size of your splat, this process may take some time. For example, a small splat with around 1 million Gaussians typically takes 10–15 minutes to generate.

You can now leave the Space at any time. The process will continue running in the background.

2.1 Progress LOD Generation​

Progress of the LOD Generation

Once you have started the generation process, you can cancel it using the icon. You can also view the progress here to see how far your LOD generation has advanced. 3

3. Tuning LOD Settings​

Finished LODTune your LOD

After your LOD has been successfully generated, it will replace your previous asset. You can recognize that the process is complete when the file becomes a .lod and the
Generate LOD button changes to Tune LOD 4.

When you click this button, a submenu opens containing the following settings and information:

  • 5 LOD Settings (X LOD Levels):
    Displays the number of generated LOD levels — in this example, 4, the visible splats and the video memory usage.

    • Default Desktop Preset: Defines the preset used when a visitor views your Space on a desktop device.
    • Default Mobile Preset: Defines the preset used when a visitor views your Space on a mobile device.
    • Enable Preset Selection UI: Shows or hides the preset selection UI for your visitors.
    • Colorize LOD Levels: Allows you to display each LOD level in color. This is especially helpful when defining presets, as it makes distance and range transitions easier to evaluate.

  • 6 Quality Presets
    Presets allow you to optimize your LOD.
    For example, for mobile devices it is recommended to keep the visible splats count under 2M splats to ensure good performance on iOS.

    • Edit Preset: Choose which preset you want to edit. Available presets are Desktop Max, Desktop, Mobile Max, and Mobile.
    • Minimum LOD Level: Defines the starting level for your preset.
      Level 0 is the most detailed level. In the shown example, levels would range from 0 to 3.
    • LOD Range X: Defines the distance at which the system switches from one level to the next.
      Example: LOD Range 0 determines the distance where the switch from Level 0 → Level 1 happens.
      The larger the distance between levels, the lower the visible splats — but this also reduces detail at greater distances.
    • Splat Target (k): Before adjusting this value, it is recommended to properly configure your LOD Ranges. The value you enter here defines a target for the number of splats per LOD level. It forces all LOD levels — including lower ones — to aim for this target count. For example, if you set the value to 1700, each level will attempt to reach 1.7 million splats, even the lower-detail levels. At the same time, this also restricts the highest-detail levels, since they cannot exceed the defined target.
      In short: Splat Target overrides the natural distribution of splats across levels and enforces a uniform target across all LOD levels, which may reduce detail or cause visual inconsistencies if misused.

Example Settings for your Presets​

Assumption: 7 Levels

PresetMinimumTypical ValuesPresetMinimumTypical Values
Desktop Max0Range 0: 10
Range 1: 20
Range 2: 40
Range 3: 80
Range 4: 120
Range 5: 150
Range 6: 200		Desktop0Range 0: 5
Range 1: 10
Range 2: 25
Range 3: 50
Range 4: 65
Range 5: 90
Range 6: 150
Mobile Max1Range 0: 5
Range 1: 7
Range 2: 12
Range 3: 25
Range 4: 75
Range 5: 120
Range 6: 200		Mobile2Range 0: 2
Range 1: 4
Range 2: 6
Range 3: 10
Range 4: 75
Range 5: 120
Range 6: 200

3.1 Using the Preset Selection UI​

Tune your LODTune your LOD

When this setting is enabled and you close the UI, the Enable Preset Selection UI will appear below the Owner Badge 7. When you adjust the preset, you will see changes in the variables Visible Splats.
You can also visualize your LOD levels in color — either by enabling Colorize LOD Levels in the LOD settings or by enabling Show Level inside the Preset Selection UI. In the UI, each range will be colorized to make it easier to understand which range corresponds to which LOD level.

The Preset Selection UI is mainly intended as a helper tool to optimize your levels more effectively. If you leave it enabled, your visitors will be able to switch between presets themselves.

tip

For the Mobile preset, ensure that visible Splat count stays below 2 Million, as higher values may cause performance issues on iOS.

4. Generate a Collision​

After tuning your LOD settings, generate a collision mesh for your splat. This enables visitors to walk on and interact with the 3D environment.

For splats uploaded as .lcc, .ply, .compressed.ply, or .sog, you can use the Generate Collision button directly. See the Collision Generation Guide for instructions.

Manually Created LOD Files

If you uploaded a manually created LOD (via the CLI), collision cannot be generated directly from the LOD structure.

Workaround:

  1. Generate a low-resolution version of your splat (approx. 1–2 million Gaussians).
  2. Upload this low-res splat as a separate entity (preferably in a separate space).
  3. Use the Generate Collision button on that entity to create the collision mesh.
  4. Download or locate the generated collision file.
  5. Upload this collision file to your LOD entity.

More Resources​