Free standalone poly reducer

[poopinmymouth]

Posted this in 2d/3d but many people might not read the thread.

Meshlab http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/

Free, standalone poly reduction tool. I've imported millions of tris, reduced to a couple hundred thousand, export as obj. Simple and fast.

Short tutorial. Open your high poly obj file (or stl). If it asks if you want to unify verts, say yes. Go to filter > quadric edge collapse decimation. Specify face count to reduce to. Be sure "preserve normal" is checked when you reduce. Click apply. Save it out as an obj. BLAM done.

http://www.mr-chompers.com/images/poop.gif (http://www.poopinmymouth.com)

[blankslatejoe]

looks sweet ben! I was just looking through a tut using polycruncher the other day, and this look like it might achieve the same results!


hey, hey -- ill be at GDC this year, and i noticed you're giving a session! When the heck is it--are the exact times not yet published?

[Gavin]

Awesome. Thanks Poopie!

[poopinmymouth]

I'm not sure Joe. I'll find out the times for sure. It's the Maxon sponsored demo. Not sure if I'll have a room, or just present at their booth.

http://www.mr-chompers.com/images/poop.gif (http://www.poopinmymouth.com)

[ThatDon]

lets hope you have to present in the nude! har har har

[Gavin]

Nah, that's the demo he's doing at my house IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN

[Snowfly]

Nice find man! They have an OSX version too. :-) :-) :-)

[East]

I really appreciate you sharing this find, poop. I'm going to have a lot of good use of it. While it takes a great while to initially load my monstrously huge ZBrush meshes into MeshLab, the resulting mesh is very easy to handle, and great when I do retopology in Silo. Again, many thanks! :)

[Susurrus]

yesssss, this looks cool. Does anyone know if its similar to the 'polygon reduction' in XSI? I tend to use that, but it can be quite dodgy at times.

Ill try this out though, thanks!

[TryForce]

thanks, but for what can i use it? ....

[Susurrus]

TryForce - Your workflow might consist of creating a high poly sculpt in zbrush/mudbox.... by mistake you delete all the lower levels of sub division and you desperatly want to have a low poly version of it for normal mapping etc etc, put it in there and it will reduce the model down in polycount. Save it off and you have a low poly model without having to actually build it from scratch.. i suppose thats one use for the tool.

Ive still not used this specific software, but XSI has similar, you can set a number of settings as to how the reduction will effect the mesh structure, and you can actually start making some wierd shapes if you reduce all the way down.. which can be handy (at rare times)

[poopinmymouth]

I use it for when I get scans (which never had a lower poly version) or to bring in a low poly asset to model around, that matches the final high a lot closer. When you go down subd levels, everything lowers in res, whereas with this, it tries to keep shapes, so if you have big flat surfaces, it takes away more from there than the other more detailed places. It can also help speed up normal map bakers because they have less triangles to deal with. It's pretty useful for any "next-gen" pipeline.

http://www.mr-chompers.com/images/poop.gif (http://www.poopinmymouth.com)

[MattiaNelli]

Thank you for sharing Poop!

Also I've found this site starting from MeshLab, a collection of downloadable 3d scans:
aim@shape (http://shapes.aimatshape.net/)

[Marcus Dublin]

I have a reason to smile today:D, this come at the right time! Thanks a bunch for sharing this Poop!:thumb:

[Marcus Dublin]

Polycruncher is really awesome Joe and I fully recommend it to anyone doing high to low poly work, but the only drawback is that it can only handle so many triangles at a time. Its best optimize a few mesh elements at a time and to keep those elements somewhere around the million mark, anything over that and it tends to crash. Other than that it's been a life saver!;)

looks sweet ben! I was just looking through a tut using polycruncher the other day, and this look like it might achieve the same results!


hey, hey -- ill be at GDC this year, and i noticed you're giving a session! When the heck is it--are the exact times not yet published?

[butt_sahib]

Free shareware FTW :)

Thanks alot mr poop

[YdoUwant2know]

A very cool tool. I have a feeling this will be very helpful. Thanks for posting this up Poop, another great find.

[KICKER]

Ass = Saved

Thank You Ben!

[Trigon]

Sweet! This is awesome....now I gotta test it and see if it works in vista 64 >.<

[tiekmir]

Kool. Thanks for the link. This programs looks pretty damn awesome.

[Shadownami92]

TryForce - Your workflow might consist of creating a high poly sculpt in zbrush/mudbox.... by mistake you delete all the lower levels of sub division and you desperatly want to have a low poly version of it for normal mapping etc etc, put it in there and it will reduce the model down in polycount. Save it off and you have a low poly model without having to actually build it from scratch.. i suppose thats one use for the tool.

Ive still not used this specific software, but XSI has similar, you can set a number of settings as to how the reduction will effect the mesh structure, and you can actually start making some wierd shapes if you reduce all the way down.. which can be handy (at rare times)

But can you still get a good result (a nice low poly model) through that method?

[Gen-an]

this is awesome! I find it to be much more stable than polycruncher when it comes to ~million poly meshes

[Bertmac]

thanks
it works nice for me
And they even have a mac version
Cool

[Juju]

Many thanks. Poop. Awesome find!

[nazeil]

I've used meshLab a few times before. really nice program, easy to use, and good results. recommend to anyone in need of a freeware poly reducer.

[rv_el]

huh... it really tore up my model in my test. the biggest problems were holes, especially around like "spikes". I recall doing bens settings. Dunno if i did something wrong or what.

[Japhir]

is there a way to make the reduced model be symmetrical? that would improve this tool sooo much. would be even better if you would be able to paint (color coded or something like that) in where you want more geometry. (e.g: warm red/orange = dense, blue/green = not so dense or something).

[JacqueChoi]

Thanks poop!

Yeh, it's primo top notch HIGHLY recommended. Been using it here for a couple of weeks.

Type in the triangle number you want, and WHAMO its that number of triangles (I couldn't find an undo function for that yet tho).


^_^

[Bokaja]

...While it takes a great while to initially load my monstrously huge ZBrush meshes into MeshLab, the resulting mesh is very easy to handle...

Is there a default limit to how dense the mesh can be when importing?

I exported objs from zbrush 2.5 - 5.4 million polygons and MeshLab crashes.
However i managed a 1.3 million polys obj - maybe its the graphics card?

Systemspecs are: Core2 DUO, 4GB RAM, 8800GTX 768mb, XP64 pro.

But yeeee I'll keep my obj's limited :D hehe - great software.

Thanks Poop. :thumb:

[Bertmac]

is there a way to make the reduced model be symmetrical? that would improve this tool sooo much. would be even better if you would be able to paint (color coded or something like that) in where you want more geometry. (e.g: warm red/orange = dense, blue/green = not so dense or something).


Hey Japhir ( alles goed gast)
I most of the time only concentrate on one half of the character
then go back to may slice it in 2 and mirror it again.
Also there is kinda a paint function already in it. okok you need to select the poly you wanna reduce and it will only work on that part
never the less it would be handy if you could us poly-groups or something to select for ya

Cya

[Gamerboi]

Thanks poop awesome ive had this program on my computer but i never knew it could reduce polys thanks a lot.

[Twindragon]

Sweet this will be much better than using the super slow poly reducer that xsi has.

[Codeman]

I was excited to see this, but I must say the program constantly crashes. I tried several objs exported in the 2-3 million poly range from ZB and it simply cannot handle it. Oh well maybe it will work on lower poly stuff.

I also find the interface to be really less then it could be. Oh well that is what you get for free.

I wish poly cruncher would make a stand alone version. I would buy it in a snap.

[Twindragon]

I imported a mesh with 2.4 million polys..at first I tried to reduce the mesh down to something really low and it didn't handle it so I went with the default number that the poly reducer gave me..reduced then ran the filter again and reduced. I did this until it got to 336,000. Nice app so far I still need to test with higher meshes.