Terrifying blender triscount?

[Sanix25]

I'm making a model for an RTG for a mod for Kerbal Space Program. It's not very complex, but my tris count is through the roof! It's at 64,000 even when my subdivision surface modifier level is 0! It looks decent at subsurf level 2, but it still has 79,000 tris! I need this thing to be at most around 2,000 tris.

Here's a screenshot: http://imgur.com/E0fWuAf (subsurf is at level 0 in this pic, it has 67,196 tris and 33,811 faces.)

How do I fix this? Is there any way to bring down the polygon count without making it look butt ugly, preferably without starting over, since this is my first blender model and it took me countless headaches and tutorials to get this far?

[Porkjet]

Hard to judge without a wireframe picture.

What I can see is that the cylinder its based on has an unnecessary amount of segments, in KSP cylinders are usually 24-sided. Depending on size, if this is going to be smaller than 0.625m, which I assume, you should even go lower, 16 or even 12 sided are enough if its small.

You don't really need any sort of subdivisiion modelling for this, just plain old box-modelling.

Those little vertical frame pieces at the top look like they might contribute a lot of unnecessary polies. If you have to have em at all, just make them simple wedge shaped pieces that you place on the mesh. I dont think you need to model all those distinctive lips on the lid there either, just make it a flat cylinder top on which you place the wegdes and the little center ring.

Generally speaking, think of how you can simplify and approximate the shapes. Only model out the rough and most defining bits, leave out tiny details or paint them in the texture.

Work with intersecting pieces, it saves a lot of polies if you can just stick a detail onto a surface without having to carve out a hole and connect everything to make it manifold.

Hope this helps a bit, please keep us up about your progress.

If you've got more mesh related questions, a pic of the actual wireframe would be very helpful.

[NecroBones]

Yeah, I think a wireframe would help. It probably came down to your modelling strategy. As PorkJet said, stock parts are usually 24-sided cylinders, unless small, in which case 16 is typical.

The flat panels could be made by creating cube primitives and then scaling and rotating them into place. My guess is you did a lot of subdivisions there. The end-cap has a lot of detail, but those can be done with a low poly-count as well.

It's hard to tell, but the rings between the flat panels look very smooth relative to the cylinder. Maybe there's a lot of subdivision in there as well?

So I guess my question is, what exactly did you do?

[Starwhip]

Yeesh. That's really high.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a KSP part with a polycount higher than

Yes, that's the model I use for my avatar.

You can simplify your model a lot, but, as the others have said, we'd love to see a wireframe.

EDIT:

The model in the OP needs to be denser than this one for the polycount he's got.

Edited August 20, 2015 by Starwhip