Best Free Program For Unsubdividing High Poly Models?

[Darealslenderman]

As title saids, i'm having a lot of trouble with blenders unsubdivide option, doesnt seem to want to work with 500k + face models. 

 

Any other programs that are much more effective at converting high poly to low

 

Been trying to make model swap for Kronen and a few alt helmets. 

Edited January 1, 2016 by Darealslenderman

[Syncrasis]

Unsubdividing... First time I've ever heard of that, lol.

 

One really great thing about Blender is that it is open source and has had a ton of plugins made for it. You should be able to find a free plugin for Blender retopology. Here's a pretty good tutorial I found on Youtube:

 

When you make your new low poly topology by hand, you generally place vertices down and the software will have it hug the reference (high poly) mesh and fill in quads/tris for you as you draw them. This gives you control over what sticks up and what doesn't, which helps you preserve important silhouette-defining pieces while economizing inner areas with fewer polygons. An algorithm that lowers your polygon count can't do that for you. You also can control things like edge flow a lot easier this way.

 

Personally I prefer Topogun but it's $100.

 

Be careful with model swaps... I haven't seen any announcements for future weapons model swaps or for alt helmets for that matter, so you're taking a risk. All that aside though, good luck! The more Tenno doing 3D modeling, the better :D I hope this helps!

[HitsuSan]

Ok stop right there!

 

The sooner you get over this idea of an automated magic unsubdivider program the better, you have to rebuild the low poly by yourself adding and removing geometry where you need it the most for a good normal map bake. It's boring and it's time consuming at first but you'll get very fast very soon if you just make some practice (and you know how normal map projection works). So, find a 3d modeling program you like and you're familiar with and learn how to build low poly models for high poly ones.

 

Syncrasis is right, blender is a very good option. I personally use 3dsMax cause i have it and i'm used to it but it doesn't do anything more or better that all the other programs do so it's your choice.