Meshlab is probably the only available solution (proprietary Lidar software doesn't count) when you have to deal with very heavy poly count. I'm working with some complex terrains, some of them up to 50 million polys and Maya or Zbrush just can't handle that. I'm reducing the poly count considerably fast in Meshlab with its polygon reduction tools.
- This terrain has more than 16 million polys. Maya can't handle this very well, and Zbrush can't manage memory to even open it. Just import it in Meshlab.
- You will be using the Quadric Edge Collopse Decimation tool a lot.
- There are different strategies available, I like to use the percentage one. In this case by 0.5
- I'll be getting an 8 million poly terrain.
- I just run the tool one more time to get a 4 million terrain. I can work in Maya with this :)