Keep UV Map after decimating mesh in Blender

[Mudchop]

Hey all. Recently I mashed up some armor pieces, but with a high poly count on the new parts, I decided to open them in Blender to reduce the amount. The only problem is that after I use the decimate modifier, it resets the UV as having none. I believe it's because of the changed arrangement of polys, but this is just an inference. Blender won't allow me to export the nif without setting a new UV Map for each part of the mesh. I can create the UV Maps but as far as making them similar to the original, I'm lost.

My questions is: Can I somehow keep the original UV Map after changing the polys?

At the worst I'll accept any other way of doing this, as far as learning to make the new UVs. I tried PyFFI but it didn't make any changes for me.

Any help is appreciated.

 

Edit: Thought it would be worth pointing out that these are Oblivion meshes.

[movomo]

If you trying this after the UV map is set, there already is a good way to reduce the poly count.

Use the "poly reducer" script instead, rather than decimate modifier. They can be found in edit mode.

[Mudchop]

Thank you so much. I wasn't able to get the individual poly reduced parts to be re-added to the mesh, but by taking the full high poly mashup and then reducing, I got it to take. It's a workaround, but it works and I'm content.

[kosukosu1]

If you want to keep the high poly count (reducing the poly count sometimes distorts the meshes), do the following:

 

In Edit mode, hit P, and then select all loose parts - this will split up the meshes

 

You can then export it ok usually - looks like a single mesh can't exceed a vertex count but you can get around this by separating it into separate parts before exporting - and you can keep your high poly count meshes.