Decimate Baker

The Decimate Baker produces low-poly copies of your meshes — the chunky PS1/N64 silhouette. It runs the engine's mesh-reduction backend offline and writes new StaticMesh assets, so there is zero runtime cost and the result is deterministic on every platform.

Why decimate?

Retro consoles couldn't push many triangles. A modern asset with tens of thousands of triangles reads as "too clean". Reducing it to a few hundred triangles gives the angular, faceted silhouette of the era, while keeping the original materials and UVs.

The baked mesh has the same overall shape as the source — only the triangle count drops.

Baking

1. Select one or more Static Meshes in the Content Browser.
2. Open Tools → RetroRender → Bake tab.
3. Pick a reduction mode and target (below).
4. Click Bake Selected Meshes.

Results are written to the Output Folder (default /Game/RetroBaked) with the Name Suffix (default _Retro). The original materials are reused verbatim — nothing is duplicated on the texture side.

The Output Log reports each bake:

LogRetroRender: Baked 'SM_Ballerina' -> '/Game/RetroBaked/SM_Ballerina_Retro' (3174 -> 476 tris).

Reduction modes

Mode	Setting	Behavior
Percent of triangles	PercentTriangles (0.01–1.0)	Keep a fraction of the original triangles. 0.15 keeps 15%. Adapts to each mesh.
Target triangle count	TargetTriangleCount (≥ 12)	Aim for a fixed triangle budget regardless of the source. More "PS1" — every asset lands on a similar budget.

Percent vs Target

Use Percent for a batch of mixed meshes where relative detail should be preserved. Use Target triangle count when you want a consistent poly budget across every prop (e.g. "no prop above 800 triangles").

Quality options

Setting	Effect
Recalculate Normals	Recompute normals after reduction instead of keeping the reducer's interpolated ones. Useful for a flatter, faceted shading.
Hard Angle Threshold	Edge angle (degrees) above which a hard normal split is created when recalculating normals.

Output options

Setting	Effect
Output Folder	Destination package path for baked assets.
Name Suffix	Appended to the source name (_Retro).
Disable Nanite	Turns Nanite off on the baked mesh — the retro look wants the classic rasterizer.
Overwrite Existing	Re-bake over an existing asset instead of skipping it.

Landscapes

The baker can convert a Landscape into a low-poly static mesh — the workflow competitors usually leave to manual export.

1. Select a Landscape actor in the level.
2. Set Landscape Mode to Convert And Bake and pick a Landscape Export LOD.
3. Click Bake Selected Landscapes.

The landscape is exported to a mesh, reduced, and saved like any other bake.

note

A very large landscape exports to a very dense mesh. Raise Landscape Export LOD first if the export is heavier than you need before reduction.

Batch & scripting

• Bake Selected Meshes / Bake Selected Landscapes operate on the current selection.
• Everything is also available from the Blueprint / Python API via URetroRenderLibrary.

Requirements

The baker uses the engine's static-mesh reduction interface, provided by the QuadricMeshReduction plugin (enabled by default). If it is missing, baking logs a clear warning and does nothing — enable it under Edit → Plugins.