Creating game models for android I've been exploring game development for a while now. I have created a small prototype but the models that I downloaded from the internet were too heavy for its small computational power. I have discovered how I could avoid the use of shaders by baking textures and shadows in blender. But I'm still not proficient in optimizing downloaded models for the internet. Basically many models on the internet contain too much detail on the surface but if I will just use textures, I don't require so much detail.


Can someone help me in to understand how I should convert downloaded models, remove extra detail and make it optimized for my use. 
My goal is to not have so much detail, I want to show models only from a distance and from only one view. What other optimizations can I employ in this case? Reasoning suggests that we are just using one view I should be able to somehow remove other useless details? How should I do that.
This problem seems very common for android/iPhone developers, which makes me believe that there should be an automated solution to do this and create some low poly, low detail, baked textured models. Is there??


I don't have much experience in this field so I'm using my intuition to guess what could be done. Please point me in the right direction so that I can learn the topic better.
Often, when you make a model for a computer game, you start out by making a high poly model. Then, from this, you make a lowpoly model that is going to be used inside the game. This is almost always a manual process and it is called retopology. After that you can bake both diffuse texture, ambient occlusion and normals from the highpoly to the lowpoly texture. You will find many many tutorials on this.

In your case, you already have the highpoly model. So do a lowpoly version and start baking.

There are numerous ways to create the lowpoly version.


Create the lowpoly mesh from scratch, extrude new vertices and snap them to the faces of the highpoly version. Fill with faces.
Create a grid of new vertices, and use the shrinkwrap modified to make them fit the highpoly model.
CGCookie have a plugin for this, Retopoflow (previous contours-retopology): https://cgcookiemarkets.com/all-products/retopoflow/
BSurfaces allows you to paint with strokes to create the lowpoly model.
The decimate modifier can automaticly reduce the complexity of a highpoly model. But almost always it must be manually corrected with one of the other methods.
more...


A quick youtube search found this (looks ok):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaqYqkjimD8

Blender cookie have many tutorials on this subject, but not all are free:
http://cgcookie.com/blender/page/2/?s=retopology&amp;s_type=tutorials

A super fast tutorial on making a highpoly model super lowpoly:

Step 1. Make your lowpoly model match the outline of the highpoly. Like this:



Step 2. Simple UV-unwrap of the lowpoly (go into edit mode, select all faces and hit U). Mark appropriate edges as seams with Ctrl-E to cut it up. Assign a new image to it.


Step 3. Bake normals to the lowpoly texture like this. Select highpoly, also select lowpoly (select the lowpoly last). Set settings like in the screenshot and hit bake. Save the image as the normal map.


Step 4. Change Bake mode to AO and hit bake again. Save out image.


Final result when combining these two maps into one material in blender. Of course, this will require a shader with a normal texture, but I am pretty certain that JME has it.


This mini-tutorial is very short but it should make you search for more help (or ask questions) on more specific topics (like: how to UV-unwrap a model).

As for your other question. I don't know of any technique to make this more automated.

The dolphin submarine is of my making.