I'm trying to figure out individual steps of my ultimate goal from this question: [Use Blender to get "Average" skull shape](https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/210418/use-blender-to-get-average-skull-shape?noredirect=1#comment355180_210418)

And particularly, I want to duplicate what the authors [of this paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21662-w) did here:

> 
> Resampling of the mesh data was performed by raycasting based on a
> hemi-icosphere with 20641 vertices and 43284 faces. The directions of
> the rays were based on the vertices of the icosphere.
> 
> 
> 

It sounds like, in order to create an 'average' skull, the authors made every skull have the same number of faces. This makes sense given what I know about shapekeys and morphing objects into one another. So, rather than tackle the entire project in one Stack-Exchange question, my question is very precise:

If I had a skull, or any object, with lets say 453,987 faces (random number) and I wanted it to be 43,284 faces (or some other specific number). Could I do that? Decimating or remeshing seem like they could get CLOSE, but is there a way to target a specific number?