I have been editing the shape of a polysurface using a CageEdit and selecting the polysurface as the captive object. I know I could select control points as the captive object and thus edit the shape without increasing complexity however this doesn’t allow for the fine details I need. As such, my polysurface has become incredibly complex (177,000 polygons) and causes my computer to freeze. I was wondering if anyone knows of a way to decrease the complexity of the polysurface while maintaining the shape.
177K polygons isn’t remotely “incredibly complex” for a render mesh–that’s not your polysurface, that’s just its render mesh–so the problem is probably actually that you’ve done too much cage-editing to your model and it has actually become insanely dense.
I mean, what do you mean by thinking you can cage edit polysurfaces without increasing complexity? That’s the opposite of what it does, it allows you to make hitherto impossible sorts of freeform edits to complex polysurfaces, at the expense of MASSIVELY adding to the complexity of your objects.
Can you post an image to show us what you are working on?
It sounds like a sculptural form. Often there is a trade off between using nurbs and preserving fine detail.
You might be better off using a poly modeler to get the shape right, and bringing back to Rhino to use Quad Remesh, subd, and convert to Nurbs