Remesh: rebuild a mesh with uniform triangle sizes

Mesh Repair › Remesh rebuilds the triangles of a mesh so that all edges get nearly the same length. Use it when a mesh has a mix of huge and tiny or long, thin triangles, for example a CAD export or a scan. Many later editing and repair operations behave more predictably on an even mesh.

Remesh, Simplify or Subdivide

You want to…	Use	What happens to the triangles
Make all triangles about the same size	Remesh	Long edges are split and short edges are removed, so the count can go up or down
Make a heavy mesh lighter and keep its shape	Simplify	Triangles are only removed; flat areas lose more than detailed ones
Add triangles only where they are too large	Subdivide	Triangles are only split; nothing is removed
Fix the shape of thin triangles without moving vertices	Make Delone	Only edges are flipped; the count does not change

Remesh does not repair a mesh and does not close holes: on a scan with 169 holes, Remesh with the default settings closed none of them, and the mesh had 171 holes afterwards. Repair the mesh first with Mesh Healer or Fill Holes, then remesh.

Remesh a mesh

1. Select one mesh in the Scene tree. Remesh works with exactly one selected mesh.
2. Optional: to remesh only a part of the mesh, select that part of the surface first. Selected edges and creases are never flipped, so the feature lines you mark stay in place.
3. Open Mesh Repair › Remesh.
4. Choose Mechanical Surface or Organic Surface.
5. Set Target Edge Length (see Choose the Target Edge Length).
6. Turn on Preview to check the result, then click Apply.

Remeshing modes

• Mechanical Surface (the default) works best for non-organic surfaces such as mechanical parts and CAD models, where triangles have non-uniform shapes and there are sharp edges between them.
• Organic Surface is for natural, smooth surfaces, where triangles are close to equilateral, have similar areas and there are no sharp edges.

Settings

Parameter	What it does	Default / tip
Target Edge Length	The algorithm keeps all edges close to this length: it splits edges that are longer and removes edges that are shorter	The average edge length of the mesh the first time you open Remesh. After that the tool keeps your last value as long as it fits the new mesh, so check it for every mesh
Preserve Sharpness	A slider from 0 to 1. Higher values keep sharp edges: an edge is flipped only if it changes the angle between the two triangles by no more than the angle shown in the tooltip	0.5, which allows flips up to 30°. 0 allows any flip, 1 almost none

Choose the Target Edge Length

The triangle count after Remesh depends mostly on Target Edge Length: halve the length and you get about four times more triangles; double it and you get about four times fewer. The default is the average edge length of the mesh (shown as Avg Edge Length in the Information panel). Long edges pull this average up, so on both models below the default gave far fewer triangles than the original.

Here is what Mechanical Surface with default settings gave on two real models:

Target Edge Length	CAD part: 79,516 triangles, Avg Edge Length 5.17 mm	Mechanical part: 133,194 triangles, Avg Edge Length 1.86 mm
2 × default	10.34 mm: 8,434 triangles, 0.6 s	3.72 mm: 8,074 triangles, 0.8 s
Default	5.17 mm: 33,742 triangles, 0.9 s	1.86 mm: 32,342 triangles, 1.5 s
½ × default	2.585 mm: 135,012 triangles, 3.2 s	0.93 mm: 129,490 triangles, 3.9 s

• Keep the default for an even mesh; on an uneven mesh it also lowers the triangle count.
• To keep roughly the original triangle count, try half the default value (in these tests it gave 1.7 and 0.97 times the original count), then check the triangle count in the Information panel after Apply.
• Use a smaller value to keep small details, for example engravings or thin ribs.
• Use a larger value for a lighter, even mesh. Details smaller than the edge length are lost. If you only need fewer triangles and do not care about their shape, Simplify keeps details better.

Advanced

Expand Advanced for more control.

Parameter	What it does	Default
Project on Original Mesh	Projects every new vertex created by splitting edges onto the original surface (before smoothing), so the result stays closer to the original	On
Max Boundary Shift	How far a boundary (a hole edge or the border of the selection) may move during one edge collapse. 0 keeps boundaries in place	0
Final Relax Iterations	Extra smoothing passes at the end. A few passes make vertices and edge lengths almost perfectly uniform but move the surface away from the original	0 (up to 10)
No Shrinkage	Shown when Final Relax Iterations is above 0. Prevents the surface from shrinking during these passes	On
Preview	Updates the mesh in the viewport while you change the parameters. The Information panel changes only after Apply. May freeze for a moment on heavy meshes	Off

Click Apply to remesh the mesh.

Example: Before

In this example, we remesh a mechanical part, so Mechanical Surface is selected: the model has triangles of non-uniform shapes and sharp edges between surface elements.

The Target Edge Length was set automatically from the Average Edge Length of the part. We lowered it to make the result denser and avoid visible distortion of the original geometry. Other settings stay at their defaults. To see the triangles, we pressed L and turned on Flat Shading.

Example: After

After Apply, the mesh is rebuilt with a more uniform edge length. The triangles across the surface have more consistent sizes and shapes, and the overall geometry of the part is preserved.