Reducing an EXTREMELY high poly mesh

[jamochawoke]

Ok guys a few of the free 3D meshes I've been able to get my hands on are things like scans of real-world statuary.

 

However, since they probably used the laser scanning method to get the statues in-program they are extremely EXTREMELY high poly.

 

They're absolutely gorgeous meshes, capturing every nook and crevice of the chisel blows. But for Oblivion's purposes it would probably crash the game.

 

So I'm trying to find a good way to reduce the poly count of the mesh whilst maintaining the original look (I can bake a normal texture off of the high poly to keep all the other stuff right?) more or less.

 

I've tried both of Blender's scripts but always what results is a nasty, blocky mess... and even then it's still rather high poly.

 

I tried looking into the retopo idea found here: http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/using-retopo-tool.php but am not confident enough in my Blender skills to try something like that... especially since the mesh I'm using is a few magnitudes more complicated then what they use in the tutorial.

 

I also have 3DS MAX 2010 with nifscripts that I got through my university but never got the chance to actually learn. But I don't know what it has available to decrease the poly count of an obscene mesh like this.

 

Any pointers?

[mrlosesafer]

Ok guys a few of the free 3D meshes I've been able to get my hands on are things like scans of real-world statuary.

 

However, since they probably used the laser scanning method to get the statues in-program they are extremely EXTREMELY high poly.

 

They're absolutely gorgeous meshes, capturing every nook and crevice of the chisel blows. But for Oblivion's purposes it would probably crash the game.

 

So I'm trying to find a good way to reduce the poly count of the mesh whilst maintaining the original look (I can bake a normal texture off of the high poly to keep all the other stuff right?) more or less.

 

I've tried both of Blender's scripts but always what results is a nasty, blocky mess... and even then it's still rather high poly.

 

I tried looking into the retopo idea found here: http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/using-retopo-tool.php but am not confident enough in my Blender skills to try something like that... especially since the mesh I'm using is a few magnitudes more complicated then what they use in the tutorial.

 

I also have 3DS MAX 2010 with nifscripts that I got through my university but never got the chance to actually learn. But I don't know what it has available to decrease the poly count of an obscene mesh like this.

 

Any pointers?

try to decimate it with a modifyer using blender?

[Matth85]

Copy the mesh, and remove anything that is not making up the big shapes of the model. Cracks, details, non-important shapes, should be deleted. Try to keep the model somewhat clean, but a tri here and there is fine.

UVW-Unwrap the low poly model, and bake a normal map off the high poly.

 

And do this manually. Automatic poly-lowering isn't as good as manually doing it. It isn't too hard, nor too tedious. Just remember to focus on getting away any uneeded polygons that doesn't support the Silhouette.