Hey, I do a lot of games modelling with Blender so for me it is important to be able to see the triangle count as fast as possible. In Blender 2.64 and below I could just add a Decimator modifier and it would count triangles right out of the box. This workflow worked but it was still a bit cumbersome, especially if you would model your lowpoly meshes in several parts as you'd sometimes have to sit there and go through 10+ meshes with your calculator ready. It wasn't all that great but I could deal with it.
But now for some reason the Decimator won't count the number of triangles anymore (not even with the triangulate checkbox checked [it just keeps on counting faces]). So what I have to do now is to look through the big modifier-list for the Triangulate modifier as well and see to it that it's placed just before the Decimator. To me this just feels like too many steps just to count how many triangles your model/models consist of.
I can see three solutions and there should be nothing stopping all three from being implemented;
1. List the number of triangles instead or in addition to the number of faces in the upper right hand corner. This would make it a lot easier for me and other game artists as we don't need to go around the scene with a calculator. If you don't want to clutter that status bar with more statistics please add a setting under the preferences for cbhoosing if you want to count faces (tris, quads, ngons) or just triangles instead
2. Add functionality to the Triangulate modifier so that it also counts the number of faces. This is a good solution IMO as you then only should need the triangulate modifier and no Decimator which would reduce clutter in the modifier stack and be quicker to add. This would be a more logical step as I think more people would expect the triangulator to show the number of triangles as well.
3. Make the Decimator count triangles when the triangulate checkbox is checked.
I realize that this bug report does contain two small feature requests, but I feel that solution #1 should have been implemented already, as this is a pretty basic yet important feature that some (most?) of the commercial apps already have and it is a feature that I have seen requested on various game artist forums before. I'm not a Blender developer, but most of the needed functionality should already be implemented.
As always, thanks for an amazing program.
Happy Holidays
Robin Karlsson
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Campbell: having the decimator print the leftover amount of faces is a good feature to put back, right?
@Ton: The feature wasn't removed and this isn't a bug.
The issue Robin is asking about is to know the number of triangles (not quads/ngons). Since the decimator now deals with ngons/quads it shows the total number of faces after execution - rather then the total triangle count.
@Robin; You're not the first person to request this and I agree its useful info, but I dont think its the purpose of the modifier to display this.
Committed changes to show the total number of triangles in object mode r53338.
closing.
It seems like the Decimator does count triangles but only if you keep the Ratio below 1.0 as otherwise it doesn't do anything (as an optimization I suppose) when you apply it (it doesn't even triangulate if you've got that checked) so it seems that I were wrong there (though I still think it should be able to triangulate and count at 1.0 Ratio even if that's not what it is for).
@Campbell: I agree that the Decimator isn't the right modifier for counting triangles, therefore I proposed the Triangulator which is more suited towards it because (reading from the release log) it sounds like it's made for game modeling. I would rather just use the Triangulator and have that count triangles as then I'll get 'Beauty Subdivide' (Decimator might have that built-in though) and it'll take up less space in the modifier stack.
I might come off as nagging, but I just want an easy way to see the exact local triangle count for the model (that is without decimating it) and for the whole viewport with as few extra modifiers per object as possible. Right now I need both the Triangulator and the Decimator for counting the exact number of triangles on a specific model which is far from ideal.
Are you saying that you added a triangle calculator at the top right corner as I asked about? If so, thank you.
Yes, displaying triangles has been added as you suggested - this is accumulated for all models in the view though.
Triangulate modifier could show face count, but I dont think this is the purpose of modifiers to display stats - in general.