Hello,
I managed to darken the unit LODs somehow. It's not perfect, but combined with GEM, SSAO, DOF and exreme shadow range setting it's much better. The LOD transition is much smoother.
The solution is simple:
Use dark skinned unit (african, numidian) model for imposter model. So the distant LOD (2D sprites) are dark skinned african models (instead of light skinned roman for example).
The problem is that every armor, helmet, shield, tunic and so on, have an imposter model, which is shiny and every variant model have to be changed manually with a more dark one.
For example most yellow colored helmets and red tunics cause bright LOD sprite, which ruins the LOD transition. So to solve this you have to manually change the imposter model for every item with more dark one (dark grey helmet, brown tunic...)
The results:
DEI and vanilla mod, changes almost all imposter LOD units. FINAL
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I'm quite happy with the result. Very smooth LOD transition. Place at the top of the loading order!
This ONLY darkens the skin colors for vanilla units. No armor or weapons.
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Last, for better unit LODs I recommend the moders to carefully choose the imposter models for their units.
Cheers!