View Full Version : Un-subdivide?

12-12-2004, 01:24 PM
Does anyone know of a function or plugin that allows you to take a mesh of quads and reduce it to lower levels of division? One that perferablly works well on a very high poly mesh.

If you dont know what I'm talking about, basically something that
takes a mesh like in the first picture and turns it into the second

12-12-2004, 03:01 PM
I'm not sure there is a universal way, as far as I know. If you use the reduction tools in Lightwave, the mesh is generally triangulated.

However, there are many local ways of doing it. Using your picture above, you can used bandglue to reduce 2 rows of polys into one row. Or you can select 4 polygons (or more) and hit shift z to merge them all into one poly. It leaves the points behind though but they're easy to remove.

12-14-2004, 04:38 PM
In modeler you could use something like bandglue if it's a simple shape or if you have a lot of time on you hands. But if you have ZBrush you could import it as a tool ( export it as an obj in modeler ) and reconstruct the subdivisions if it's made out of quads only.