First off, this is an image of what the model was based off of.

a nice, nice little rifle. Yummy. ;) Okay, now this is what Kinslayer modeled.

I think he did a good job on it, considering this is only his fifth model in Lightwave. He got a MUCH better start on Lightwave than I did, however, because I had to learn most of the program myself, and I'm only now starting to pump out quality models. Well, at least I think they're good. ;)

Now, it's a nice model, but unfortunately it's 572 polygons. Let's make it a more game-friendly number, say, 400 or below. Now, we need to reduce it somehow, but we have to keep SOME semblance of quality and detail. ;) Now, where might we begin chopping off some polys? Well, if you knew, you wouldn't be reading this, would you now? So shut up and let me drive! ;)

There's a special technique, well, it's a trick actually, but technique makes it sound a little more exclusive. ;) One thing about primitive modeling (spheres, boxes, cylinders, etc) is that it always leaves faces where they aren't visible. Easily fixable, of course, but you don't retain the amount of control you would in point-by-point modeling (I'll probably write a tutorial on that someday if the demand is enough). Now, we have to find these faces and delete them. where might they be, do you think? Look at this diagram.

Let's first concentrate on area 1 (see image). This was a cylinder that was stuck into the rifle, basically. A cylinder has two ends, though, correct? one end as at the end of the barrel and one end is inside the gun. Now I'll select Polygons (ctrl-H) to set the selection mode to select polygons instead of points. Now let's zoom in on area 1 and select the polygons that we're trying to delete.

I selected the polygons and glanced down at the bottom of my screen. Lo and behold, that's three polygons. It may not sound like much, but every little bit counts, eh? Now I'll delete them by pressing, yep, you guessed it, DELETE. Now we have 569 polygons, unless I'm mistaken.

Something else I just noticed.. the unseen top faces of the legs. They could certainly use some deletion. Also the unseen top face of the box that the legs are protruding from.

Six polys, not bad. DELETED.

Now let's move onto area 2 (see image). We're staring at the stock. What's wrong with it? Nothing, really, but the top face could probably go.

2 polys. Hmm. Heck, why not. DELETE.

Now we're going to hop on over to area 3 (see image).

The top of the handle has a face that isn't seen that takes up 3 polys. Let's DELETE it! :)

Let's do area 4 and 5 now. By now I'm hoping you see the trend here.

4 POLYGONS! GOD SAVE US ALL! DELETE! We now have 554 polys. :) Not too bad a job.

Now we'll home in on the areas that could use some un-detailing.

The scope is a bit high on detail that won't be seen ingame. Not a bad thing, just, well, I doubt anyone will stop in deathmatch to look at and stare in awe for a particularly long time. So let's delete it. We'll now use the WELD TOOL... a lot. ;) If you're not familiar with it, here's how it goes.

The WELD TOOL is a tool in lightwave that welds two or more points together. The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl-w. You select one point, the point to be welded, then you select another point, the point that the first point will be welded to. THIS IS CRITICAL. If you don't select the points in the right order, the points will weld in strange ways in strange places, and we don't want that, do we? ("No.") Right. We'll be using this tool in the exercises below, so listen closely. You'll be using this tool in the future if you don't know about it already. :)

Now let's zoom on on the back section of the scope and do a little welding, shall we?

Now make sure you've only selected TWO POINTS, because if the model is symmetrical, you'll be selecting the other two points directly behind it. Unselect those in the other view. Now press CTRL-w and it'll weld these two points. This is what it looks like now:

Now proceed and weld all the other points and it should end up looking something like this:

Wait a minute, we still have 554 polys. What the... hey, what's that seam? Uh-oh! Looks like the evil 2-point polygons have crashed our party! HURRY!! KILL THEM! Ctrl-H then w! That should bring up a dialog listing all the types of polygons this model has.

There they are. Press the '+' next to the '2-point polygons' label and it will select them. Now press DELETE and it'll delete them. Aha! 544 polys and no seam. :) The seam is a telltale sign of 2-point polys which are BAD. So are 1-point polys, but they aren't visible. If you see them again, repeat the deletion steps I just walked you through.

Now repeat the welding steps for other parts of the scope. It should end up looking like this when you finish:

I did a bit of work on it and the model has now been reduced to 498 polys. WOW! 46 polygons less than just a moment ago! :)

Note: As I was looking over the model I saw something weird-looking on the back of it and deleted it. That saved 12 polys, which brings us down to 472 polys. :)

Let's go to area 2 now. (forget about that?) The trigger area. This ought to be fun and a bit easier to work with.

Do you see where a poly or two could be reduced? I see it on the left side of the trigger guard where it angles sharply. Just weld some points to make it straight, that saved some polies. :) Now the trigger looks a little funny to me.. and it could use some reduction. So weld up that little baby too. Hmm, that's about all we can do here.

I moved some points around because something weird was going on with the trigger, so I "fixed" it. We're now down to 484 polys. Not bad, eh? Now we're going to take a shortcut. :) Download the qemLOSS2 plugin from this page. qemLOSS2 is the most useful polygon reduction plugin I've ever used, and if you don't use it now, GET IT!!! I can't POSSIBLY stress how useful this plugin is!

After you've downloaded qemLOSS2 and added the plugin, go to the Custom tab in the Objects tab and select qemLOSS2. We want 400 polys, right? Okay, so type that in and select 'YES' on 'Preserve Mesh Quality'. We want that. Now press 'OK' and it'll reduce the polys and put it in a new layer. Check the poly count. 400? But the model looks the same! How can this be? I don't care, it works, that's all that I care about. ;)

Well, I hope you all have enjoyed this tutorial as much as I have. I'm surprised that I actually took the time to write one. Hopefully, in the future, all your models will have much fewer polygons. ;) If you have any questions\comments, email them to the address below. Happy modeling!