[Bf-education] Reducing Polygons

Roger Waggener rogerwaggener at gmail.com
Mon Oct 26 16:04:58 CET 2009


> Blender, and I was hoping someone could help explain how I can reduce the
> polygons used within the model?

Blender has a decimate modifier which algorithmically removes
polygons, but unfortunately it isn't very good at retaining depiction
fidelity and it creates sub-optimal topology.

The heavy truth is that the only way to reliably reduce polygon count
in a model while maintaining impressional depiction and decent
topology is manual labor. As far as I know a magic 'reduce polygon
count' button that gives GOOD results does not exist. Machines just
aren't smart enough to do it well yet

If none, or very little of what follows makes sense, you'll have to
get up to speed with the basic Blender interface before you'll be able
to make much progress. Here
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro is a good place
to start.

One very useful tool is the edge-loop remover, however this tool
usually only works if the model was created with good topology- ie.
good edge-loops. You can try it with your high-poly model in edit
mode, alt-right-click an edge. Hopefully a whole edge loop will be
selected, though even if only one edge is selected you can still try
the edge-loop remover- it might work, after your selection is made,
hit the x key and select "Edge Loop". The edge(s) selected will be
deleted resulting in the overall number of polygons in the model being
reduced.

Be careful, however, because although the UV coordinates are usually
remapped correctly, they can sometimes get skewed requiring a manual
re-map. A good way to minimize the danger here is to work slowly one
loop at a time and when the UV go bad, select the face that is mapped
incorrectly after a loop removal and the faces adjacent that are still
mapped properly and use the adjacent faces as a guide to remap the bad
coordinates.



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