Tips for reducing polygon count

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I've recently started playing around with 3d design, so I'm pretty green with 3d modelling. I've been trying to take apart royalty free models and test certain techniques on them. One of the things that I would like to know how to do is take an existing model and reduce the polygon count (to make it more game friendly for instance). Is there a tool/technique to do this in SoftImage, or is the only way to simply delete polygons and replace them with approximations?

I should mention that I have seen the poly mesh -> polygon reduction option. I'm wondering if that's considered the best option, or if there are some user tricks beyond that option (or perhaps tricks to using that option).

Thank you for any help.

[Christoph_Schaedl]

i would do a retopo by hand with topogun or 3dcoat...