What was the Softimage's Polygon Reduction algorithm?
It's 2019 now. Though Maya has integrated Softimage's polygon reduction algorithm since 2014, it seems that the algorithm doesn't get revised.
Is there any chance to know what algorithms were using for Softimage's polygon reduction? Is it published in a paper? When did it be implemented?
Is there any chance to know what algorithms were using for Softimage's polygon reduction? Is it published in a paper? When did it be implemented?
Replies
There is no demo you can download.
You've basically got two approaches at present. Decimation and voxelisation
Both systems are pretty dumb - they're not interpreting the shape of the mesh in any meaningful way beyond changes in surface direction so you really need to feed them information.
Most decimation algorthims appear to work on basically the same idea - areas to protect are defined (uv seams, material boundaries, user defined edges etc.) and it tries to protect them, other bits basically get trimmed down by proximity and curvature.
The major differences between tools are in how you mark up areas to protect.
Voxelisation involves turning the mesh into a volume and then generating a skin over it (basically dynamesh ) - this tends to result in "cleaner looking" topology and is the better way to go on very high resolution geometry. The downside is that it won't maintain uvs etc.. And it won't inherently optimise flat surfaces etc.
Zbrush, simplygon and houdini can do both, instalod seems to be on par with simplygon although I've not used it so can't say how it works.
Results from Zbrush decimate, simplygon decimation, houdini mesh reduce and proOptimize in max are similar enough that I'd treat them as interchangeable with the caveat that Zbrush allows the best manual control, houdini the best procedural control and simplygon the best one click results
In terms of how you evaluate - try them out and see what fits your use case best.