Making some product renders/videos for the company I work for. To save time, I had the models exported as .stl files from Solidworks. The problem is that the mesh topology is horrible. Here is an example of what I’m talking about:
As you can see, there is a ton of extra geometry here. It sometimes (not always) shows up in renders, and makes texturing really difficult.
Any ideas on how I could simplify this? There are a few hundred separate pieces so it needs to be fairly simple. I’d be fine with a solution that removes the screw holes as they aren’t necessary for this project.
I could recreate this part in a few minutes, the problem is there are a couple hundred parts that need to be fixed. The question really is if there is a fast way to accomplish this with a bunch of separate meshes.
I may go through and fix some of the larger parts, I’ll have to look at the renders to decide if it’s worth taking that much time.
I don’t know of any real automatic topology tools that are suited for this type of mesh. I know 3Dcoat has some, but I think they are more for organic models.
the problem is there are a couple hundred parts that need to be fixed.
Oh ok so you are talking about assembled product. That must include nuts ant bolts with holes in parts.
Well then, get rid of all the parts that will not show like internal components, bolt holes etc. If you are not certain what shows, just select all parts, hot key A, then hit Ctrl + J to make it a single mesh. In Edit mode with Face select, hot key C and start selecting all outer faces. Ctrl + I will invert the selections and just Delete all the internal faces.
