I first ran Desimation Master on the model at 10 and this gave me a very nice model.
I continued to work on the model and ZBrush slowing down so I did another DM on the model.
This time at 20 ---- the model lost about half it’s detail — the base totally gone etc.
The model is now at
Polys - 12831402
Points - 11554201
HiddenPolys - 0
Hidden points - 0
ok what do I need to do to lower the poly count?
retopo, break it into pieces, work with HD geo, those are my suggestions.
Break it up into sections using subtools.
Decimation master should not be used to lower the polycount to keep working in Zbrush. Its use should be to export a high polycount model into other programs or for 3d printing.
When you decimate a model in Zbrush it converts the quads into triangles. Zbrush doesn’t work well with triangles and a lot of its tools and brushes won’t work as expected with them. Zbrush works best with uniform quads. This means modelling using subdivisions and quads. To lower the polycount you’ll need to retopologize the model to be more efficient. If you already started from uniform quads you can try breaking up the model into sections using subtools. Subtools can greatly increase the detail and polycount. For example if you’re limited to 5 mil and you break up your model into 2 subtools each subtool can be 5 mil making your full model 10. 3 subtools would be 15 mil etc. You can also try using the HD subdivisions to get extreme detail.
beta_channel - thanks
MentalFrog - thanks and thanks for the detail info