I have been learning the basics of blender for the best part of the day, and I still cannot figure out how to make models(imported) smaller in file size(where their original file size is 2MB+).
The reason why I want to make the files smaller is because I am trying to use them in my iPhone application, however the app crashes when the .obj files are over 1MB.
Could anybody please help me I have been at this for hours..
AFAIK, there's no native IOS support for .obj format (referring to IOS OpenGL APIs). So either you use some IOS app that can import .obj format or you've made your own such parser.
If it's a 3rd party app, check and see if it cannot read zipped versions of the .obj files. If it does (and is properly implemented) this will use less memory when parsing your .obj file(s)
If it's your own parser, update it so that it can read zipped .obj files.
There are also .obj optimizers, which make your .obj file smaller by either rounding up values or removing vertices (if they're too close together etc).
Very few kinds of assets are expressed effectively in text-based formats.
In the case of .obj meshes, the data in the file is not suitable for direct consumption in a 3D API either, as it has multiple indices per vertex and the possibility of more than three vertices per face.
Consider making a very simple binary file format suitable for direct use with your target platform. It would essentially consist of a header outlining the vertex and index counts for each geometry, followed by solidly packed blobs of vertex and index data.
Again, text formats for bulk data rarely make much sense, at least not at the deployment end of your pipeline. The closer to the end consumer a file format is, the more specific and optimized it should be.
