Simplifying Geometry and Tris?

Support Modeling
1

Hello all,

So I did some forum searching and I was having trouble finding anything. Here’s what I was wondering.

  1. I have a mesh that has various areas that are co-planar but have multiple edges in them, all I really want to do is simplify a mesh without sacrificing the shape. Is there a built in function in blender to do this?

  2. On another note, there are occasions which I wish that Blender didn’t show geometry in quads but in tris, every once in a while I get a “bent quad” where that hidden edge that joins the two tris isn’t planar with the quad, is there a way to show that edge?

Thank you for your help, it is much appreciated.

2

Select the quads and go Mesh–>Faces–>Quads to Tris or Ctrl T.

As far as simplifying the mesh you just have to delete edge loops where you can.

3

Is there a WYSIWYG way of edge loop deletion or is it mainly just click, delete, and fill?

4

What I do is:
Alt click to select an edge loop. (or ctrl+tab into edge select mode and manually select the edges with the circular selection tool.)

Ctrl+e, then select edge slide. Edge slide the edges to overlap with another edge.

Hit a twice to deselect, then select everything.

Press w, then select remove doubbles. This will remove all overlapping vertecies.

5

Alt click to select the edge loop and hit Delete --> Edge loop

6

Oh wow… That is really helpful! Thanks!