Reduce Poly Count

Reduce Poly Count lowers the face count, then runs quad recovery on the result. Use it when the source is unnecessarily dense and some loss of geometric detail is acceptable.

Settings

• Poly Reduction Ratio - ratio of faces to keep.
• Safe Two-Pass Reduce (large meshes) - reduces large meshes in bounded stages.
• Clean Degenerate Geometry - optional cleanup before/after reduction.

Shape keys and backups

Topology-changing reduction cannot preserve exact shape-key correspondence. Base 3.0 creates a full hidden backup before destructive reduction when needed. The original shape-key data remains available in that protected backup even though the processed topology changes.

Recommended use

• Use for props, scans, background assets, and over-dense imports.
• Inspect silhouette and shading after aggressive reduction.
• Do not treat decimation as animation retopology for deformation-sensitive hero characters.