There's a limit to the complexity of objects that you can upload to Shapeways. We currently support up to 1 million polygons and/or 64 MB files.
Some tools like ZBrush can quickly create a high polygon count, making it easy to exceed our upload limits. Fortunately there's a solution known as polygon reduction (also known as mesh decimation). Chances are that your 3D application already has this built-in, otherwise the open source tool MeshLab offers an excellent alternative. MeshLab is available for Windows, OSX and Linux.
The image below shows the results of a test with a small toy car model that had 480,000 polygons. Down to 120,000 polygons, the difference in quality is small:
With models below 10 cm there's not a big difference in print quality when a file is 2 million polygons or just 200,000 polygons. This is mostly due to the resolution of the printers.
You can download and install MeshLab and import your model here.
From the menu, select Filters > Remeshing, simplification and construction > Quadratic Edge Collapse Detection. If your model is textured, there is also an option (with texture) that will make sure your textures are positioned properly.
A modal with a few options will appear, we recommend using the below settings:
Target number of faces - The number of faces you would like your mesh to have
Quality threshold: 1.
Enter a value between 0 and 1 here; the higher the value, the harder MeshLab tries to stick to your original model's shape. Selecting a value of 1 yields great results.
Quality threshold affects the simplification penalizing bad shaped faces. To approximate accurately the original shape only with well shaped triangles you require a higher number of faces with respect to allowing more freedom in the final triangle shape. The value is in the range [0..1]: 0 accept any kind of face (no penalties), 0.5 penalize faces with quality < 0.5, proportionally to their shape.
Preserve Boundary of the Mesh: Yes
The simplification process tries not to destroy mesh boundaries, e.g. exposed edges of the mesh are left untouched. This parameter has no effect on watertight meshes.
Preserve Normal: Yes
Select this to stop MeshLab from accidentally flipping the face normals. Try to avoid face flipping effects and try to preserve the original orientation of the surface. The only drawback of enabling it is a slight increase in the processing times. This option is on by default.
If you do run into "inverted normals" issues when uploading, try reorienting the normals with the option Filter > Normals, Curvature and Orientation > Re-Orient all faces coherently (note that this will only work for manifold objects).
Optimal position of simplified vertices: Yes
When collapsing an edge, the chosen vertex position minimizes the current estimated error. If disabled, the edges are collapsed onto one of the two vertices and the vertices of the final mesh are a subset of the original mesh. This option is on by default.
Planar simplification: Yes
Add additional simplification constraints that try to preserve the current shape of the triangles. It can greatly improve the quality of the shape of the final triangles on perfectly planar portions of the mesh. Like the quality threshold it affects the accuracy/complexity ratio. This option is off by default because it is useful only in particular situations, like when you have perfectly flat areas finely tessellated.