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 Skimpat https://skimp4sketchup.com. Skimp can also import and simplify fbx, obj, stl, among other file formats.

Below is the original post from 2008.

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.

Polyreduction Alogrithm.pdf

polyreduce.rb

@creasia said:

You have convinced me that you can now do anything. Have you ever considered creating an exporter for Yafray?

Thanks for your comments, but I think I am at my limit for Ruby projects! Maintaining one exporter is enough for me, combined with my other projects.

@mariocha said:

Here is my way of thanking you for that Whaat an amazing plugin.
Plain SU, done with Sub-Smooth and FDD. They just complete each other so very well !!

Your welcome! Thanks for purchasing! Great flower! I love to see what people are using the plugin for!

lapx,

I know exactly what you mean. This would be a useful tool and a huge timesaver.

I don't render much but this my favorite one from my small collection. I did it shortly after I discovered SketchyPhysics. Indigo render.

@rayochoa said:

You could make it an addition to subdivde and smooth. That would be really good.

Sure...but then you'd have to purchase subD and smooth twice if you already had it...

@cphillips said:

Its a known bug. I haven't figured out how to detect those faces yet. You can fix it by erasing the face and redrawing it using a clockwise line.

As I was playing around with my own beveling script, I found this method to be useful:

edge.reversed_in?(face) 

The EdgeUse class also has some useful methods that may help fix this bug.

Great script, BTW

Nice to see you having some fun with the plugin! Keep it up! There's endless modelling possibilities....

Impressive modelling, solo!

I am really curious to see you do some character modelling using Subsmooth. It seems like the Mickey model would have been a perfect candidate for using the plugin. Will we see some Subsmooth characters soon?

Indigo 1.0.9 (1.0 Stable) has been out for awhile. A beta version of SkIndigo has been available on the Indigo website to use with this version of Indigo. However, I am now (finally) releasing the official stable version of Skindigo 1.0.9 that should be used with Indigo 1.0.9

In case you haven't heard, Indigo is a free unbiased renderer (like Maxwell or Fryrender) that can produce images of outstanding quality with very little setup time.

I think you will find the SketchUp plugin (SkIndigo) to be one of the easiest to use of any renderer plugin. The entire interface runs right inside SketchUp so you don't need to learn a new program.

Major new features in Indigo 1.0.9 (all supported by SkIndigo)

• IES light support
• Region rendering
• Alpha rendering
• Aperture diffraction and realistic camera glare
• Camera tonemapping controls (ISO, shutter speed, exposure compensation)

Major new features in SkIndigo 1.0.9

• Complete UI upgrade using web dialogs (beginner and advanced UI modes, material thumbnails, slider controls, tooltips, etc.)
• Tonemapping controls
• Improved texture support (BMP, GIF, TIF, and PNG can now be used)
• Comprehensive support for nkdata (Metal) materials

Previous Features

• Very easy to use and get great results
• Lightning fast setup time
• Assign material presets for glass, frosted glass, plastics, leather, car paint, lights etc. with one click
• Material previews
• Bump, specular, and clip maps using up to 4 uv sets
• Exit portals (allows much faster renderings of sun-lit interiors)
• Environment mapping and SketchUp sun
• Supports instancing (great for landscaping, trees, etc.)
• Save your materials and load them later for future use
• Blend and layer multiple materials using weight maps
• Realistic depth of field rendering
• SketchUp fog export
• Resume a render
• Render selection only (great for quick previews)
• Render matches SketchUp viewport exactly
• Supports up to 8 simultaneous render threads
• Free!

Indigo main download page:
http://www.indigorenderer.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=64&Itemid=99

Indigo Gallery:
http://www.indigorenderer.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_gallery2&Itemid=26

SkIndigo tutorials (made for an older version of SkIndigo but still useful):
http://www.indigorenderer.com/joomla/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2317

I hope that kwistenbiebel and lrsuser don't mind me posting their renders. They are two of the best I've seen using SkIndigo.

looks great!

I don't think you can set shortcut keys using Ruby, but I could be wrong.

@pixero said:

Looks interesting. What about keeping UVs for correct texturing?

I can maintain material assignment but I don't think it will be possible to keep the UVs looking right. We'll see...

Here's what I'm working on right now. It's a bit buggy and far too slow but it seems to work pretty good. Each statue is reduced to 75% of the vertices in the adjacent statue.

Another good one Solo. Thanks!

@daniel s said:

Great tutorial!!!
A tip: you can use the crease tool without making the group in step 3. Use directly the crease tool on the ungrouped geometry and then use subdivide and smooth. So you don´t create the proxy for removing it later.

Daniel S

You can also crease all of the edges and vertices of a face at once by selecting the face and then selecting Tools->Subdivide and Smooth->Crease Selection->Edges and Vertices

Great tut, Solo! I am excited to see what you will create with this plugin!

@hfm said:

At home, I've got a pretty decent pc [dual core 6400 cpu, 8800 gts and two gigs of ram]
and the thing that worries me is that after subdividing one object, SU isn't running as smooth as it should. Can anyone give me some info on this?

There are two things that could cause SU to run slower:

1. Viewport navigation becomes slower due to higher number of polys displayed. This is a limitation of your computer hardware and of SU itself. A high-end video card would definitely help.

2. If you are modelling using proxy subdivision and you have auto-update turned on, the updating may be causing SU to run slow (for example, if you paint the faces of a proxy, it will update each time you paint a face). However, if you are not currently editing the proxy, SU should run at normal speed. Turning auto-update off should also return SU to normal speed.

Hope this helps.

Great job Chris! Looks awesome! As if there weren't enough reasons already to thankyou for your work!

Looks like I won't be finishing my bevel script after all. Oh well! Looking forward to the release!

Dale

I wouldn't consider myself an expert. I am basically self-taught and with that comes lots of bad programming habits. I learned everything I know about Ruby scripting in the last 18 months from these sources:

1. http://download.sketchup.com/OnlineDoc/gsu6_ruby/Docs/index.html (SketchUp Ruby API Developer's Guide)
2. http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/ (The Pragamatic Programmers Guide)
3. Opening up other plugins with a text editor and trying to understand the code.
4. Helpful people on SCF

You should probably start by reading the fist few parts of 2) You might not understand everything at first, but when you start looking at 1) and 3), things will start to make more sense.

You can't learn this sutff overnight. Start off with something very simple. There are lots of helpful people on the forums so best of luck!

@cruelcomedy said:

thank you for this plugin. its amazing

I've seen your work. I can't wait to see what you can do with this plugin! Don't be shy about posting your amazing skills!