Reduce polygons in a 3D model online — STL, OBJ, GLB

No file handy?

Keep 50% of triangles

Before
After
Reduction

What this tool does

meshopt-based simplification: fewer triangles while keeping silhouette and important detail.

Live before/after comparison to validate the result visually.

Every level is computed from the original model — no accumulated degradation while trying percentages.

Works with open and closed meshes, from STL to GLB.

Frequently asked questions

How many triangles does a 3D print need?

Far fewer than a scan arrives with. For a part of typical size, between 5 and 15 cm, somewhere around 100,000 to 500,000 triangles capture every bit of detail a 0.4 mm nozzle can physically reproduce. Above that you are storing information the printer cannot materialise: the slicer still processes it, slicing takes longer, the file is heavier, and the printed part comes out identical. 3D scans are the main culprits — three or five million triangles is perfectly normal, because the scanner captures at its sensor's density rather than at your printer's. The ilove3d polygon reducer lets you bring that number down in the browser and compare before and after on the same model. If the destination is a 3D engine or a website rather than a printer, the figure drops much further.

Will I lose detail when simplifying?

Less than you would expect, because the algorithm does not delete triangles at random. It collapses first the edges that contribute least to the shape: flat areas where a hundred triangles describe what two could, redundant density on smooth surfaces, detail below what is visible at all. Corners, edges and sharp curvature changes are the last to be touched. In practice, reductions of up to 75% are usually indistinguishable to the eye on a printed part, and the ilove3d polygon reducer shows the before and after view on the same model so you judge it yourself rather than trusting a number. Texture coordinates survive, because the simplifier rewrites the index without touching the vertex buffer. Below 10%, visible faceting does start to appear on curved surfaces. If faceting does show up, step the reduction back rather than accepting it: the tool always re-simplifies from the original file, so nothing is lost by trying a gentler setting.

Why doesn't trying several percentages degrade the model?

Because every simplification starts from the original file and never from the previous result. That is a design decision rather than a detail: if the passes were chained, trying 50% and then 10% would not give you the same thing as going straight to 10% — it would give you noticeably worse, because each edge collapse carries the previous one's error and curved surfaces progressively facet. With the original always as the starting point you can move the control as often as you like, compare 75%, 25% and 10% on the same part, and step back without having lost anything along the way. The ilove3d polygon reducer keeps the loaded model untouched in memory and generates a fresh mesh on every pass, so the file you download comes out of that comparison rather than a chain of successive approximations.

Is it useful for game or web assets?

Yes, and the numbers there are considerably lower than for printing. A real-time asset usually lives between 10,000 and 50,000 triangles depending on how close the camera gets, against the hundreds of thousands a printer handles without complaint. The ilove3d polygon reducer preserves texture coordinates while simplifying — it rewrites the index without touching the vertex buffer — so a textured model stays mapped after the reduction, which is precisely what breaks in many tools. For the web, export to GLB: it packs geometry, materials and textures into a single file and it is what engines and browser viewers open. If the model also carries heavy textures, the site's GLB compressor re-encodes them to WebP and cuts the final size considerably more than triangle reduction alone. Between the two steps, a scan that arrived at several million triangles usually ends up small enough to load in a browser with no wait at all.

Question of the month

Which printer do you use?

Reduce polygons

What this tool does

How it works

Upload the heavy mesh

Pick a percentage

Download the light version