Lower a mesh's polygon count and shrink its texture maps while keeping the UV texture mapping intact — everything keeps landing on the exact same places, just at lower resolution.
It's a separate extension from Painted 3MF Export (its own zip / entry in Preferences); the two don't depend on each other.
UV coordinates are normalized 0..1 values stored per face-corner, independent of
both image resolution and polygon density:
- Texture size — a 4096² and a 1024² image are sampled by the exact same UVs. Shrinking the image changes detail, never where it lands. UVs are untouched.
- Polygon count — the Decimate Collapse modifier interpolates and carries the UVs along with the surviving vertices, so the texture keeps mapping to the same surfaces.
- Blender 4.2+ / 5.x: Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Get Extensions ▸ ▾ ▸ Install from Disk…
and pick
the_reducer-1.2.0.zip(or drag the zip into the Blender window). - Enable it if it isn't already.
No external dependencies.
- Select your mesh (make it the active object).
- Open the N-panel in the 3D Viewport → "Reducer" tab.
- Set the Polygon Reduction % and the Max Texture Size.
- Click Reduce.
By default it produces an independent copy <name>_reduced and leaves your
original untouched.
| Setting | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Merge Vertices (by Distance) | (Pre-Clean) Weld duplicate / near-coincident vertices before reducing, at the given Merge Distance. Cleans up split-vertex exports (CAD, photogrammetry, some GLB/FBX) so Decimate collapses evenly. UVs are untouched |
| Instant Clean | (Pre-Clean; shown only when the Instant Clean add-on is installed) Run Instant Clean's Clean command on the object before reducing, using the settings from Instant Clean's own panel |
| Reduce Polygons | Toggle mesh decimation on/off |
| Method | (shown only when Exoside's Quad Remesher add-on is installed) Decimate — collapse edges, fast, triangles out; or Quad Remesher — rebuild clean quad topology with the external engine, then transfer the original UVs onto it |
| Polygon Reduction | Percent of triangles to remove (60% keeps 40%). Live readout shows current → projected face count (for Quad Remesher, the projected target quad count) |
| Transfer UVs | (Quad Remesher method only) Quad Remesher output has no UVs; copy the original mesh's UV layout onto the new topology (Data Transfer, nearest-face interpolated) so textures keep mapping to the same surfaces |
| Preserve Symmetry | Collapse symmetrically across X/Y/Z so a mirrored model stays mirrored |
| Triangulate Result | Keep the collapsed geometry triangulated (recommended for 3D-print / 3MF) |
| Keep Decimate Live | Leave the Decimate as an unapplied modifier so you can fine-tune the ratio in the Modifier panel instead of baking it now |
| Reduce Textures | Toggle texture down-scaling on/off |
| Max Texture Size | Cap the longest edge (4096 / 2048 / 1024 / 512 / 256). Smaller images are never upscaled; non-square images keep their aspect |
| Maps | Resize All Maps (base color, roughness, normal, …) or Base Color Only |
| Apply To | New Copy (<name>_reduced, original untouched) or Active Object (rewires its materials to the reduced textures) |
When Exoside's Quad Remesher add-on is installed and enabled, a Method selector appears in the Polygons section. Picking Quad Remesher:
- Computes the target quad count from your Polygon Reduction % (a quad ≈ 2 triangles) and hands it to the engine. Symmetry maps to the engine's X/Y/Z symmetry. Every other engine setting (adaptive size, hard edges, …) is taken from the Quad Remesher panel as you configured it there.
- The engine runs in the background — the Reduce button returns immediately and a status line under it shows progress. When the retopo lands, The Reducer finishes the job: transfers the original UVs onto the new topology (Quad Remesher output has none), triangulates if requested, applies New Copy / Active Object semantics, and reduces textures.
- One remesh runs at a time, and a licensed/activated Quad Remesher engine is required (run it once from its own panel first if you never have).
- Because the run is asynchronous, it isn't a single undo step — use New Copy (the default) to keep the original safe.
The Pre-Clean section at the top of the panel runs before any reduction, in the order shown:
- Merge Vertices (by Distance) — a
remove_doublesweld. Runs on the target object (the copy in New Copy mode), so the original is never touched. - Instant Clean — invoked only if that add-on is installed and the box is checked; it cleans per your Instant Clean settings.
The reduction percentage applies to the cleaned triangle count. With the Quad Remesher method, the engine remeshes the original object, so pre-clean runs only in Active Object mode there (in New Copy mode it is skipped and the report says so).
- Each reduced texture is a new packed image (
<name>_reduced) embedded in the.blend, so the change persists on save/reload. Your original images — and any external files they came from — are never modified. - Very aggressive polygon reduction can smear the texture near UV-island seams; moderate reductions (40–60%) stay clean.
- Decimate Collapse keeps a watertight mesh watertight — good for the 3MF pipeline, but eyeball the result before printing after heavy reduction.
GPL-3.0-or-later.