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Hello there Blender community!

I am a Blender noob and am helping a mate come up with a solution for a work of art that he is putting together.

Basically we are going to create a 3D model of a scale plasticine replica of the final work using photogrammetry. From there we'd like to mesh the model with triangles that will directly represent steel rods that will be welded together.

What I'd like to know is whether Blender is going to be a suitable package to optimise the number and geometry of the triangles over the model so that for a given triangle size the number of welds and amount of material used can be reduced?

Any guidance or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Oliver.

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You can reduce face amount by using Decimate modifier. It provides severl methods and options to simplify the mesh.

enter image description here

However, it works more like collapsing. It is not aimed to accurately reduce by a given size or number. I don't think Blender currently support this specifically.

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  • $\begingroup$ Cheers Leon. Good to know. Do you think that Blender is going to be a good package to achieve what I'm trying to achieve? If not, can you suggest any other software that would have meshing to a set triangle size capabilities? $\endgroup$ – oldo.nicho Mar 5 '14 at 7:02
  • $\begingroup$ @oldo.nicho That's out of my scope. Afaik, Meshlab would be nice tool for this, if the answer above cannot satisfy you. But I'm not sure whether it supports the "set triangle size" algorithm as you mentioned. $\endgroup$ – Leon Cheung Mar 5 '14 at 7:28
  • $\begingroup$ thanks for the advice. I'll have a look at Afaik and a better look at Meshlab. Cheers :-) $\endgroup$ – oldo.nicho Mar 5 '14 at 7:44
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    $\begingroup$ Haha, I just searched for AFAIK expecting a software package to pop up... You learn something every day, haha... $\endgroup$ – oldo.nicho Mar 5 '14 at 7:45
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You can get pretty close to what I think you want by using Dynamic topology sculpting:

I'll quote my previous answer:

Another option is to use Sculpting with Dynamic Topology.

  1. Enter Sculpt Mode in 3D view > Header

  2. Enable Dynamic Topology (CtrlD) in Tool Shelf (T) > Topology:

    enter image description here

  3. Set the brush tool to Simplify in 3D view > Header > Brush > Brush Tool:

    enter image description here

  4. Sculpt on the mesh to remove detail. You can adjust the Detail Size in 3D view > Tool shelf > Topology to change the level of detail the brush paints. Note that this value is in pixels, so it is view dependent. (The more you zoom out the lower the level of detail is)

Update: as of 2.71, there is now a constant detail option which is not dependent on zoom. There is also a detail picker, so you can set the detail based on the density of existing faces.

Example:

enter image description here

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Try the remesh modifier. Taking any mesh as input, it builds it from scratch with cubes or pyramids. You can't directly control the size of the building blocks, you have to go around the setting "Octrree depth".

Here is a screenshot on using it on an irregular mesh with various settings and depth:

remesh

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  • $\begingroup$ I think the OP just wants to reduce triangle amount by a very spesific way, which blender does not currently support. $\endgroup$ – Leon Cheung Mar 5 '14 at 11:30

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