[Plugin] Polyreducer 0.1

[Whaat]

Update 2019-07-26: Hey there! Polyreducer is a really old and slow plugin! It has a lot of major limitations. If you are looking for a new, fast and incredibly powerful polygon reduction extension for SketchUp, you should check out Skimp at https://skimp4sketchup.com. Skimp can also import and simplify fbx, obj, stl, among other file formats.

Below is the original post from 2008.

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Hi all,

I want to release this script so I can get on to other things. It's not perfect but it works pretty well. I don't know if I will work on this script any more. Anyone is free to take over where I left off.

If anyone is interested, I have also attached the reference material for the algorithm that the plugin is based on. (Thanks to Stan Melax for the article)

Usage:

1) Select the faces that you want to perform the reduction on.
2) Right click and select 'Polyreduce' from the context menu.
3) Input the percentage reduction. For example, select 20 to reduce the number of vertices by 20%.
4) A recommended workflow is to perform several reductions using a smaller percentage (50% or less). Then, use the 'undo' and 'redo' commands to cycle through the reduction operations to choose the level of detail you are most satisfied with.

Issues:

1) It is highly recommended not to use this plugin on faces that have free edges. It will likely not work as expected.
2) The plugin must triangulate all faces that are connected to the selected faces prior to performing the reduction.
3) The plugin is quite slow and may cause SketchUp to hang. It is usuallly successful in completing the reduction if given enough time.
4) Material assignment is maintained but UVs (texture position) are not.

[boofredlay]

Thanks Dale. This should prove very useful indeed.
I just got your Subdivide and Smooth tonight... starting to play.

[lewiswadsworth]

Thank you, Dale.

I had an interesting conversation with John Bacus and several other Google people about your recent scripts at the AIA convention today (or rather yesterday). I'll summarize sometime tomorrow (its 1:30 AM, and I've been grading assignments for the past few hours) in your subdivide and smooth thread, because that was the item that dominated our talk.

[remus]

Cheers whaat, another useful plugin to add to the arsenal.

(perhaps i should setup a shortcut key for saying that ^ , it seems to be a recurring thing )

[watkins]

Dear Dale,

I too would like to add my thanks for a very useful script.

I have been playing around with a new bathroom design (for myself), and so I will try your script on some of the high poly models of basins and toilets I have found on the web.

Kind regards,
Bob

[pichuneke]

You could have earned some money! You know it. If you had developed the rb a bit more, you could have done a new plugin like subsmooth rb...

Thanks a lot. I don't have enough words.

[Jon]

Thanks so much, Dale. Very useful.
And thanks again for making it free.

[solo]

Dang! another excellent addition.

Thanks mate.

We gonna have to start naming this software 'Whaats-up' soon.

[ilay7k]

Thank you!

Pete, you need assembly sketchup - whaat edition ... don't forget other talented ruby-writers of our community ...

[juju]

Sweet man, thanks!

[kwistenbiebel]

Thank you Whaat.
A great contribution again to the SU community!

[Mike Lucey]

Thanks Dale,

Again a most generous ccontribution that is truly appreciated by the Community.

Mike

PS: Will you be at 3DBC, I'd like to buy you a drink!

[johnsenior1973]

I've only done some quick tests, but so far I'm struggling to find any reason for this plugin. Following on from Solo, I pulled a model of Bender from the 3DW. I tried a poly reduction of 30% on it, it messed up the model slightly and actually increased the file size from 1500 kb to 1639 kb.

[remus]

File size isnt really very important unless your creating absolutely monstorous files. What does matter however is face count. You can have a 100mb file open easily if its got 50,000 faces, but if its got more than 200,000 faces your in for a hard time.

So basically face count is more important than file size pretty much all the time.

[ilay7k]

ehhh...can you(Whaat) add real-time trigger as at standard smoothing tool?

[ely862me]

i don t know how this should woork but for me it doesn t
first i create a shape and when i clicked polyreduce it cuted half of the polys
then i take a hood of a car and i clicked polyreduce and it start counting something and doing nothing it says like that : colapsed (i wait until)2 milion from 98 edges

[remus]

No need to boast coen

[Whaat]

We gonna have to start naming this software 'Whaats-up' soon.

[human]

Wow, nice plugin. compliments Subdivide and Smooth perfectly. Strange thing is...
Say i create a sphere. i right click and choose polyreduce. and it works, but i cant select all the faces with one click. now there are lots of faces that make up the poly-reduced sphere. Hmmmmmm...

[Whaat]

but i cant select all the faces with one click. now there are lots of faces that make up the poly-reduced sphere. Hmmmmmm...

What do you mean by 'can't select all the faces with one click'

Maybe you can post a screenshot of the reduced sphere??

[CadFather]

Thanks Whaat - i have the feeling you will come back to it again if only as a module for something else.. very interesting!

[vampa]

This is wonderful, im a noobie and have been trying to reduce polygones to a sphere until i found this, you made my day

[farukahmet]

i don t know how this should woork but for me it doesn t
first i create a shape and when i clicked polyreduce it cuted half of the polys
then i take a hood of a car and i clicked polyreduce and it start counting something and doing nothing it says like that : colapsed (i wait until)2 milion from 98 edges

Same here

[mpowell1234567890]

Think I found a bug. Polyreducer 0.1 freezes sketchup. Whenever I try to click on the model, nothing happens..

[Gaieus]

Not me. My comp starts choking at 1.2 million only.

I could hardly get along with this model...

Statistics.jpg

Sorry for keeping the thread OT, Dale- thanks for this gem again!

[remus]

Mpowell, i think it freezes sketchup because it needs to do a lot of calculations. Its not really a bug, just a feature of the plugin.

[human]

here is the sphere before polyreduce:

After:

But when i try to paint the sphere:

[Whaat]

ok, I understand what your question is. When the plugin reduces the polygons, it creates new polygons with hard edges. If you want to be able to select all the faces with one click:

1)triple click to select all connected faces
2) go to window->soften edges
3) drag the slider to the right until all of the edges are softened.

I think you may have edge display turned off (it's in your 'styles' window). Otherwise, you probably would have noticed the hard edges and figured out the problem.

[TIG]

You could check the edge state of the faces before replacement. Normal, hidden, smoothed, soft etc and then for each new face make it's edges to match...

[ilay7k]

How do think Dale, can you make like this http://www.donyalabs.com/files/Polypen_ ... uction.wmv ?
It will be nice feature - backtracking reducer