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Good morning,

I'm trying to getting from this

to this

Is there an automatic way to limited dissolve all only square adjacent surfaces of a mesh into few only squares surfaces (or rectangular surfaces).

Situation: The fact is I had a text object, then limited dissolved for having n-gon only surfaces, then applied remesh for have square only surfaces. Now I have too many useless square surfaces that I think can be collapsed in few ones.

What I need The point is, I want a meshed extruded text to have as few as possible quadrangular surfaces, without altering its perimeters (only collapse same angle quadrangular adjacent surfaces int as few as possible bigger quadrangular surfaces).

Already tried I've already tried the remesh modifier, but it only messes up the border of my text mesh.

Hope I make myself clear in my explanation.

Thank everyone for any answers

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  • $\begingroup$ Welcome to BSE, Are you looking to a fully automated way, because it's possible to select faces with similar normals, then you can dissolve the edges using that selection, but of course some manual work will still be required. $\endgroup$ – Georges Jun 7 '16 at 9:55
  • $\begingroup$ Can you try to enhance the format of your text a little, specially the title? $\endgroup$ – Georges Jun 7 '16 at 9:57
  • $\begingroup$ Have you looked into the decimate modifier with yhe "planar" option, it won't create quads but it can collapse edges of planar faces within a certain threshold. Maybe it's a good starting point. $\endgroup$ – Duarte Farrajota Ramos♦ Jun 7 '16 at 12:33
  • $\begingroup$ @Georges - 1) the title, as you modified it now is not explaining my question: I asked to "collapse same angle quadrangular adjacent surfaces into as few as possible bigger quadrangular surfaces" which is different from your version "dissolving edges in quad faces that share same normals" (in this case, the faces I'm getting could also be n-gons), please, edit the title back to original - 2) if I select faces with similar normals, like you said, and then dissolve the edges of this selection, I could also obtain n-gons ... that is not what I want: I want to get only quadrangular faces. $\endgroup$ – M Aries Jun 7 '16 at 12:48
  • $\begingroup$ I edited the title because it was unclear, if you check the image that you attached, the results you want are Ngons! It doesn't matter if they look square, they have more than 4 vertices, so they are Ngons. I asked that you edit your format before SUGGESTING edit, the edit were approved by other moderators. I believe you can still edit your question and title. $\endgroup$ – Georges Jun 7 '16 at 12:52
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A partial solution that lower the mesh vertices but does not keep the quads.

  • Join the two shapes (to work both on 'Marco' and 'Aries'). For that select them both in object mode, then CtrlJ
  • Go to edit mode and delete the bottom faces vertices, so that you keep only the top faces

At this step you have the exact same shape, except it is flat : enter image description here

  • Go to object mode
  • Convert to curve AltC, then "curve from mesh/text"

You obtain this (no faces) :

enter image description here

  • Go to the properties panel and in the curve tab, then click on 2D

enter image description here

This makes the faces reappear : enter image description here

Now to regive volume. Convert again to mesh (AltC then "Mesh from curve/.../text")

The inner mesh is the following : enter image description here

You can now extrude it again to regive the original volume.

So no quads. But starting with 41 402 vertices, you now have 8 080. And the shape is the same.

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  • $\begingroup$ @MAries : i know you probably started with a text which is similar to the curve version I propose here... but I hope this proposal helps to move things... $\endgroup$ – lemon Jun 9 '16 at 18:02
  • $\begingroup$ Limited Dissolve will make that much faster and simpler. $\endgroup$ – Mr Zak Jun 9 '16 at 18:53
  • $\begingroup$ ok @MrZak... this answer was just about going on as no one gives a way... $\endgroup$ – lemon Jun 9 '16 at 18:55
  • $\begingroup$ @lemon ... thank youo for your consideration and for your answer. Even if I meant to obtain quad surfaces for the mesh, it gave me hints on the reversal way to handle such "once-text" mesh. I appreciate it $\endgroup$ – M Aries Jun 13 '16 at 8:41
  • $\begingroup$ @MrZak ... yeah, "limited dissolve" is what I've used in the process: "text" -> convert from curve to mesh -> limited dissolve (obtained n-gons) -> remesh modifiers (obtained 4-gons .. but too much ;) ) ... thank you also for your consideration $\endgroup$ – M Aries Jun 13 '16 at 8:43

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