Any good polygon reduction tool?
Community Forums/Developer Stations/Any good polygon reduction tool?
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| Hi all, Are there any other good polygon reduction tool? (I heard Maya has this tool built-in, Torque Engine also has one, Milkshape3d has one for directx) Thanks in advance :) |
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| Stay away from 3D Action Reducer ( http://www.action3d.net/ ) as it looks like that they have gone out of business. The license key will only work once and if you have to re-install you have to re-send for a new license key and since the email I send gets bounced back, I now have a application that is totaly usless. |
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| @Dawlane: Thank you for your tips. Would your license key is related to the date issued (eg. 2007jan). If so, did you try to set your system clock before re-install again? Any more options of polygon reduction tool? :) |
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| Despite all of its many bugs, Daz3D's Hexagon 2 has a poly reduction tool which works quite well. As with all poly reduction tools though you'll need to do a bit of fix-up editing afterwards, depending on what it is you're reducing. |
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| It is date related, but having to messing about with the system clock would be a pain and besides it was installed and activated. It just simply deactivated it's self so the license scheme was well thought out wasn't it (LOL). I came to the conclusion that I was wasting money on the cheap tools (AC3D is not bad but could do with a decent keyframe animation plugin and a DirectX export that can export animations, it does have a reduction tool built in :-) ) so I bought my self Cinema 4D R10.5 XL (I've used C4D 5.2 XL a few years back and was impressed by it but the interface was a bit naff. Version 10.5 GUI is mind blowing <8-) ). Cinema 4D R10.5's only downfall's are... 1) The Price £586.33 (basic app no modules) + P&P 2) DirectX Export doesn't support animations but you can download XPort ( http://www.spackenz.de/~philipp/) which does for free for non-comercial use (dont know how much the comercial license would cost.) 3) No quick polygon reduction tools (there's the optimize function but its tricky to use). There is a comercial plugin that's easy to use SimpleMakerPro ( http://www.cinemax4d.de/simplemakerpro/home_us.html ) for £80.97. |
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| There is an option in Blender called the Decimator. It is used to reduce the number of polygonal faces in your mesh and is found in the Editing panel. To use it, select your object and then click and drag in the Decimator field until the number of faces reaches a number you think is suitable. You can then hit Apply or Cancel. WARNING: using the decimator will destroy all UV coordinates, vertexcolors, deform weights, and edge data. This means you will want to do as much as you can to optimize your scene geometry before setting up UVs on objects. This is not necessarily an ideal solution, as often times you don't know how much you actually need to optimize your scene until it is all put together. Aside from that (or maybe because of it), it does a great job at retaining the integrity of the object's shape while optimizing it for speed. Currently (Jan, 2005), it will only work on a per-object basis, and not on selections of faces. |
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| @Aoneweb If you're using Blender you'll get much better results using the "Poly Reducer" script as it will maintain UV cords, vertex colours and vertex weights (particularly useful for high poly to low poly game models). Select mesh. Switch to edit mode Mesh-->Scripts-->Poly Reducer Set the poly reduce factor (defaults 0.5) i.e half the polys than before. Remember that if you're working with quads that the game model will be in tris when calculating the final amount. Simple to use and much more effective that the sledge hammer that is the "Decimator" HTH |
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| I use Cinema 4D R10, its a great program but ive never managed to get a animated mesh out of it, xport requires you to use the old way of animating doest it? ive only used the new animation system and dont know how to rig any other way? |
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| I find the most efficient and reliable form of poly reduction is an exclusive tool I have, not readily available to all, I'm afraid. That tool is called: Me. :) Seriously though, I've never found a perfect poly reduction tool, but Maya's isn't too bad. You will probably want to clean it afterwards though. |
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| Pete Carter Haven't tried using joints yet but bones are still there.You can convert between bones and joints in the Character menu. If you follow the XPort tutorials on rigging with skined and rigid animations your half way there. Tip when doing vertex mapping use set selection in the Selection menu before using the set vertex weight because if you don't you wont get multiple vertex maps. This is needed so you can attach your mesh to the bone. Tip 2: Deformers don't export in XPort use bones. |
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| Dawlane: I have the same problem because I bought Action3D Reducer :( |
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| @ardee Thanks dude, I will give that a go. |
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| Hey Peeps, I just renewed my Action3D license at the turn of the year and it works fine. I gave the vendor details of its new install location and received the update license file by email. I have been using Action3D for years now and I reinstall windows every 6 months and so far have had no problems getting it renewed. Cheers Garion |
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| Silos Topology tool is useful for manual polygon reduction: http://nevercenter.com/support/help/polygon_tool.htm |
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| Thank you for your recommendation.:) |
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| I have used few poly reducers and sadly few can make even almost-ok job... by far best results can be had doing the mesh by hand. |
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