You need to shave off more quads. Take off another 4k tris, weld all verts with a precision of 0.01 to collapse any overlapping verts, set your meshes to a single unified smoothing group (except for hard edges if there are any), check your UVs and make sure any and ALL overlapping verts within your UVs are welded.
Convert to Edit Poly (or place the modifier under your Skin modifier, but keep in mind this will jankify whatever verts you edit on your mesh's rig) > Graphite modeling tools (Google it, it is typically directly above your model editing window) > Quadrify (all)
Like Velen said, the topology will be slightly whack depending on the tris before you quadrify. You typically have to do a few repairs along the way. One thing I've noticed is that, some times, diamonds form in the topology and it messes up two separate loops, essentially connecting them. It's difficult to describe in words but if you understand topology/edge loops you will understand what I mean when you see it
Select the loops you wanna remove, hold control and click remove. ALWAYS hold control when removing loops. This will also delete all the verts that made up the loop you're deleting. You typically wanna remove loops that don't add too much geometric detail. Depending on the fidelity of the model, you'll also have to modify the position of your remaining loops, as well. You can select either edge or face under the "Constraints" option under the Edit Poly modifier tools. This makes it easier to move loops without messing up the silhouette of your model too much. Experiment with both because in my own experience they both work differently depending on the loop and surrounding edges/polys Post Merge: February 18, 2016, 09:37:11 AMDouble post because [censored] IT
An edge loop is essentially a ring of edges that go around a model. This is more of a fundamental modeling topic so I would suggesy watching a couple tutorials on Youtube, specifically Arrimus' tuts on Topology. Having a solid understanding of fundamentals will help you immensely.
Don't worry about re-optimizing it. It should be okay. As Drog said tho your nodes are ridiculously high. Lower em and badda boom badda bing no moe lag
Usually what you wanna do to optimize poly count is quadrify your model and remove/modify edge loops. It's the quickest way AFAIK to quickly lower overall poly count without using a program specifically designed to decimate models
Rule number one to optimization is to never use pro-optimizer, the result is cheap and ironically not optimal most of the time
Considering the complexity of his geometry, or lack thereof, you should be able to easily shave off another k or so. But that's irrelevant right now because you have some oddities going on with something else, as 16k facepoint count should not induce lag in most cases. Node count? Texture resolutions/formats? Vert count?
as for your spec issue I'd imagine it's an improperly set up material or/and shader, unless you've imported the ref texture as a CMPR texture as that can cause issues as well. Regardless, double-check your material and shader to make sure they're appropriately set up
Incorrect. If anything, that's one of the worse ways to lower polycount when your model is already lower then 50k polys.
I recommend box modelling a lower poly model on top of the existing model. It'll take a little longer but it'll come out much cleaner. Plus, making edits to accommodate bone structure/UVs will be much easier as opposed to a messed up ProOptimized model. There are methods to bake the texture from the high poly onto the low poly as well, you'd just need to do a little digging on Google to find the appropriate tutorial.
PM me with questions. I'll do my best to answer em.
See, while I would be more than glad to do that, I already rigged it. D: I don't want to re-rig all over again. D:
Okay, so idea: Is it okay if I ask you to tell me said step-by-step process for UVing without my model?
Well UVing in general would take a long time to teach you, and frankly I do not have the time for that haha. I'll go over how to improve what I was talking about in my previous post in a PM when I get the chance, though.
Hmm... those 4 cylindrical objects could use a little cleaning up. I can see a poly just floating around in the 3rd object from the top, toward the centre-right.
If you send me the model I'll clean up the UVs for you, and show you step by step what I did in order to do it, if you'd like.
Edit: just checked what the model actually looks like, and yep, that's an easy fix. The topology needs some quick edits, too. Would you happen to have a copy of the model before you optimized it?
What do you mean by "perfectly flat"? If you want the tiling to be consistent, select whichever UV island you want to "flatten" and relax it (relax can be found in the options menu of the Unwrap UVW modifier) by polygon angles. This will smoothen your UVs out.
Google Uwrap UVW relax tool if you want more in-depth info.
Yeah, that was quite helpful actually. I've always tried to pull inspiration from different places, I just haven't planned a "theme" for any of of my recolours. I'll be trying that out soon. Thanks for the info!