Reduce a Wow model's poly count without messing bones?

[Macadamia]

Hello everyone !!!

Sorry for asking this here (but I intend to use the model in WE ), the modeling forum doesn't seem to be very active, and I'd really like some advice on this matter.

I found a nice port of a Wow model made by Vulfar. This Russian person didn't share many models, but those he did are quite amazing.

Of course it's a wow model with many animations. I have no idea what it is related to as I left Wow when Burning Crusade was still the latest expansion.

The model is called Kyrian Coloss, and I kind of fell in love with it, and would like to use it in my current map. I used @Retera Model Studio Reforged Hack to remove all the parts that I didn't like (some transparent textures and some particle emitters that I did not like). Then I removed all animations I didn't want and renamed some as extra attacks, because they would look nice as attacks.
Finally, I resized the model so that it does not look like a Pacific Rim's Jaeger.

Anyways, I then used Magos Model Editor to add a Camera for the portrait, and converted to MDL to optimize the model with @loktar 's MDL Optimizer.

In the end, i managed to reduce the model size from 1.4Mb to 550Kb, and resizing textures to 50% and convert them from TGA to BLP made them go from 4Mb and 257Kb down to 199Kb and 16Kb, while the model still looks nice.

The problem is my map is a multiplayer map, and it's total size is around 4Mb, size I have achieved with a lot of optimization and choice of models/textures with a good compromise between quality and size.

Fact is I don't want the model to take up to 20% of my map size just for a beautiful but contextual model.

So I tried to convert the MDX file to OBJ with BitRun Converter, then opened it in Blender 2.82, and tried to reduce the poly-count by applying a Collapse Decimate Modifier with 0.3 as a factor.

As I feared, the conversion to OBJ had lost most bone information, and the resulting model, although only 155Kb, had all animations messed up.

So here is my question :

IS there a way to change the poly count of a model by altering its vertexes in blender, and then add the geoset back into the original MDL, without losing bones references and thus animations ?

IF it was possible, it would be really helpful, especially for simplified custom edits of Reforged models too as they are also huge in file size.

Thanks !!!

EDIT :
Adding my resulting model and textures.
Both textures need to be placed in a "Custom Textures\" folder.

 

[Jaccouille]

Well I would give a shot at importing the animations from original model to the low poly one using retera model studio. Time consuming but should work.

You didn't upload the resulting model.

 

[Uncle]

The map size limit in multiplayer is 256Mb. Don't know anything about your question though.

 

[Macadamia]

You didn't upload the resulting model.

Well I did post the resulting WORKING model before reduction as what I ended up with after going through Blender was the entire model acting like an attachment to the origin rather than a rigged model

I posted the working version in case somebody would want to give a try at reducing the amount of polys.
I have never used @Retera's Model Studio to transfer animations between models, because I am really a novice at editing already made complex models, I tend to do too much in Notepad++ and MDL.

But I understand that I need to learn this if I want to progress beyond the simple models and basic animations scope.

@Uncle :
yes I heard, but since I moved in the countryside last year, I have lost my 1Gb fiber internet connection and ended up with a 5Mb ADSL one.
So although I understand still being drastic with map size today is much less relevant than it used to be, I believe I should make an effort to keep the map size reasonable.
Or maybe I just can't get rid of old "good habits" that became obsolete.

 

[Lt_Hawkeye]

There's a plugin that allows you to import mdx files into blender but for 2.79. You can also use the mdx squisher if you hadn't already to reduce size further.

 

[Macadamia]

Thanks, yes I ended up using a second portable version of Blender 2.79 to test this MDX importer, unfortunately no more luck on the bones and animations.

Anyways, I have decided to import the model as-is, and the map is still only 4.5m so nothing to worry about, unless I would want to import more like this