So... turns out my sculpture has 4,939,482 faces. šŸ˜­ How do I reduce the number of faces?

Iā€™ve been trying to use the Decimate modifier to reduce the number of faces, but every time I try to enter in a number, Blender stops responding and I have to close the program to start over. This results in the modifier not even actually applying.

How in the hell am I supposed to reduce the number of faces? Every time I do even the slightest thing, especially with the modifiers, Blender starts lagging and freezing. My Laptop couldnā€™t handle it, so Iā€™ve been trying to do it on my desktop for the past hour, only to end up with no results. My desktopā€™s specs are as follows if it matters:

Operating System: ā€ŽWindows 11 Pro

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700G

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060

RAM: 32 GB DDR4

VRAM: 8GB

Processor Speed: 4.6GHz

Storage: 953 GB (Currently have 578 GB left)

Please help me. I really just want to hurry up and make my game. :sob::pray:t5:

There is no way you can use the decimate modifier in un-subdivide mode on such a heavy mesh. You will have to set it to collapse mode if you want it to even work without crashing, and even then you might need to do it in multiple smaller steps, applying the modifier in between.

Is this a voxel remeshed sculpt with messy topology? If it is, un-subdivide wouldnā€™t work anyway. You would need to reduce it in collapse mode, then do manual retopology (or use some good, paid auto-retopology tool) to get something clean and useable.

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How long did you wait? Iā€™ve had models where blender was unresponsive for 20 minutes or so, but got the job done in the end. It could be that it says unresponsive, but itā€™s actually working in the background.

I second not using unsubdivide on a sculpt mesh. If youā€™re dead set on using this sculpt for your rig, you can try the collapse option and hope for the best with rigging and animation (Donā€™t recommend). If not, youā€™re going to want to retopologize. You can do that on top of your sculpt probably without decimating it at all.

Without any sarcasm or ill will, Do you know what Retopology is?

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What number value do you think I should use as I apply the modifiers? I assume the higher the better, right?

Higher is a Higher percentage of the original verts. 1 is 100%, .5 would be 50%, etcā€¦

Higher will preserve more of your details, but for what you need it for, I wouldnā€™t say itā€™s better

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I kinda do. I downloaded two free extensions/addons thatā€™s supposed to help me Retopolgize quicker. However, I havenā€™t been able to use them forā€¦ obvious reasons. Theyā€™re called PolyQuilt Retopology Tool [Fork] and QRemeshify. (I donā€™t have any money to buy Quad Remesher and I know Iā€™m gonna want to use it for more than 30 days, so I found something close to it thatā€™s free.)

I honestly donā€™t know. It wasnā€™t very consistent with the loading times. On my Laptop, Blender would close out all together by itself.

I am. Iā€™m very happy with how this character turned out, considering this is my first time actually successfully making him in 3+ months. I donā€™t want to get rid of him. Also, what do you mean by ā€œDonā€™t recommendā€?

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I mean I donā€™t recommend doing that. A sculpt is generally the starting point for a model thatā€™s going to be animated, rather than the end point. But if you can get it working with a decimated sculpt, more power to you.

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For a heavy model, I would set the ratio at 0.8 to begin with, this should be stable enough not to crash. Then, I would apply the modifier and redo the same thing again a few times until the polygon count has been lowered some. Then, I would start decimating by 0.5 at a time until you just start seeing the detail loss.

If you are going to be applying the modifier, I would suggest turning its viewport visibility off before setting the slider, or you will need to wait twice (for the viewport to update, then again when applying).

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Do I keep decimating with the Collapse option or do I use the other options?

I would use only collapse. It will keep the visual look of your model the best.

Un-subdivide is only an option if the model was subdivided to begin with and has a perfect quad topology.

Planar will cause visible facets on the model. I would only use it if thatā€™s the desired effect, or for models that are meant to have angular shapes.

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Alright. Iā€™ve been using your method and so far it seems to be working. My model currently has 515,230 faces. Should I start decimating with 0.5 now? How many faces should I reach before I need to stop?

That depends on your computer, but unless you are on some really weak laptop, you should be more than fine using any value now.

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I tried decimating with 0.5 and now my model has 67,629 faces. Blender is starting to run much smoother now.

Now that I think about it, this whole post was really trying to find a way to reduce lagging and crashing. Iā€™ll figure out the retopology eventually.

Thank you and everybody else for your help! :heart:

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Un-subdivide reduces edges equally across the entire area, so using it will lose details.

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Youā€™re doing this wrong. Youā€™re destroying the details of your high poly sculpt with the decimate modifier and youā€™re still not going to be able to rig the end result. What you need to do is leave your high poly sculpt alone and make a new model over the top of it that is retopologized, then bake the details from the high poly to the low poly. Please, please, please watch some tutorials about retopology and preparing a model for rigging. Youā€™re setting yourself up for a lot of misery and sadness down the road, and I donā€™t want that for you

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Thankfully, my brain was working properly and I made a pre-Decimated copy of my sculpture. :sweat_smile: I just wanted to find a way for Blender to stop lagging so much because it was getting annoying.

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If you carefully adjust the decimation so it doesnā€™t visibly damage the main shapes, you can do retopology on it, so I would say thatā€™s still useful for performance.

If your original sculpt had fine details on it, you can always bring it back and reproject or bake that detail on the retopologized model later.

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Yeah, Iā€™m gonna try to retopologize it later today. Hopefully the tutorials can help me. :crossed_fingers:t6:

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Good luck :slight_smile:

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Thank you!

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