Original Post
I'm trying to find the best way of simplifying some character meshes, say from a few thousand triangles down to a few hundred (so very low detail by todays standards). This is for an external tool, doesn't need to be done in real time so speed/memory isn't really important. What is important is that the final result looks as much as possible like the high-poly model and introduces no artifacts like overlapping parts of the mesh etc. Also preserving texture coordinates as much as possible would be appreciated. I have already checked out a few techniques like Quadrics but I'm interested to know what you would recommend based on the above priorities. I'm also open to using some in-built feature of a modelling package or proprietary tool if there is one that gives the best results.