Reduce the polygon count of a model

A scan or a CAD export can arrive with millions of triangles for a shape that a few thousand would describe. Reducing it is easy. Reducing it without wrecking the silhouette is the part that needs to be looked at.

Open a model

How the simplification works

Polynite collapses edges by error, keeping the ones that carry the shape and dropping the ones that do not. Boundaries and UV seams are treated as constraints, which is why the texture usually still lines up after a heavy reduction. The target is expressed as a proportion of the original, so the same setting behaves the same way on any model.

Look before you commit

Every reduction is a trade. The viewer draws the original and the reduced mesh in the same frame, split by a line you can drag, so you can see exactly which details went. A number in a dialog cannot tell you that the ear of a character disappeared at sixty percent, but the split view can.

Several steps instead of one

If the model is going into a game or a configurator, one reduced mesh is rarely the right answer. Polynite can build a series of steps from the same source and select between them by screen size, so the triangle count follows the camera rather than being fixed once and for all.

When reduction is not the answer

If the file is heavy and the mesh is already modest, the weight is in the textures. Reducing triangles will do almost nothing. The optimizer page covers that case, and Polynite shows the split between geometry and textures so you know which of the two you are fighting.