But only decimate at the end when you know you don’t need to sculpt on the forms any more
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Does the decimate tool degrade the quality of the model? Or just remove extra clutter that isn’t needed? Looking at my objects there, I’m now noticing that quite a few of them have counts over 1 million. That’s probably way overboard for those parts, and may be part of why it’s using resources the way it is. I guess as a graphic designer, I’m used to cranking up the resolution on my projects, and then just creating smaller duplicates for distribution, that way I always have a large enough source for future proofing. Though that’s only an issue with raster graphics, when I work with vector graphics I don’t have to worry about that. But with 3D, I’m probably just adding a bunch of extra resource use with no real benefit.
Thank you so much, btw, for all of the recommendations and advice! This has been extremely helpful! I think I’ve been going way overboard on the resolution for my parts and pieces in my models. 
Just out of curiosity:
Why do you need 20 million vertices for this model?
I guess normally this model with good topology does not need more than 10000 and that would be too much.
With 20 Mio Vertices you can create a hole Star Wars fighting scene with 100 Spaceships.
By the way, another important point is the UNDO / REDO history, it consumes a lot of RAM, but you can adjust that.
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I probably don’t need that high of a count, I’m just used to cranking up resolution on raster projects for graphic design, and I didn’t realize that that isn’t a good practice with 3D modeling. I now am realizing that I’ve probably been going way overboard on my resolution values for objects in my models. . Also, thanks for the tips on the Undo/Redo, that will be helpful. . It looks like I’ve been going way overboard on my vertice counts if my one little fighter model uses the same resources a whole Star Wars battle use! 
. Thanks for pointing that out, I really appreciate it. . And that’s after I turned it down! I think if I remember correctly, two little detail pieces had about 13 million apiece, which would have meant my model when it was unstable would have probably had around 40 million vertices!
You are not completely wrong to be using hi resolution like this.
If you want to create hard surface things like this and have crisp but smoothed edges (not razor sharp edges), then you do need to use hi poly count during the process.
For example take a primitive, then use the trim tool, or booleans to get the shape you want, but this will leave you with unrealistic razor sharp edges. So you then need to voxel remesh at a high level. Then you can use smooth tool on the edges to round them slightly without them becoming jagged or pixelated. THEN you can use decimate to bring the poly count way down.
Can you see any difference between these 2 shapes (the left one is 3.5million polys, the right is 28,000 - and could be made even less) The only difference is right one is decimated.
Here is wireframe turned on
Decimation is one way to do it, but the new quadremesher is probably even better. Just search “nomad sculpt quadremesher” on YouTube and a handful of vids will show up
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You make sculpting much more difficult and you use up resources - I don’t know how many 100MB your file uses in disc space - a spaceship like yours should need maybe 1MB.
A cube needs 8 vertices, why waste 1 million on it.
Here is an example: approx. 3500 Verices for the whole spaceship.
If you enjoy a new display or are happy about the new keyboard, then I understand buying a new iPad.
But I don’t think you’ll get better performance if you use millions of vertices for nothing. 
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Awesome! Thanks for creating that side-by-side! And thanks for the tips on the resolution, I really appreciate it! . There’s no visible difference between the two to me, and there’s obviously a huge difference in the vertice count. Btw, is the vertice count the same as polygon count, or are those two different things? And the guadremesher sounds interesting! I’ll have to see about looking into it and getting it.
I think my model was taking up about 3GB of space. So it will definitely also be good for saving storage space! . And that model you made is quite detailed and complex! . I’ll have to be more careful about not wasting a ton of resources on unnecessary vertices/polygons.
I think all my hundreds of sculptures together have 3GB of disk space .
The spaceship in my last post was 115 KB.
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Yeah, it will be nice to free up more storage space! My other models are probably similarly unnecessarily bloated!
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Strictly speaking polygon count and vertices count will be a bit different (polygon will always be a bit less) but in this situation they are basically just telling us the same thing - the overall size of the model. I think Nomad mostly tells us vertices count, I was using both terms in a casual way to kind of say the same thing.
My last bit of advice is that if you decimate, it should probably be the last thing you do to the sculpture - once all the sculpting/trimming/smoothing etc is done. Decimating creates triangles which aren’t so good to sculpt on. (You can covert it back to quads by remeshing if you have to, but you will degrade the details a bit)
I mentioned quadremesher, here is a picture of the type of mesh you can get from it to compare with the others I posted
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Thanks for the recommendations! . I think I’ll buy the quad remesher, it looks very useful. .
So I guess the takeaway is that the base spec will be more than enough as long as I don’t crank up polygon counts like a madman, lol!
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My son is a young artist and would like to begin 3-D sculpting on an iPad, which I want to give him for Christmas. Hardware budget is < $400. Some questions:
- What is the oldest (year) model you would recommend?
- You said you still use iPad Pros without an M processor. What older processors are OK for sculpting?
- What is the minimum RAM and Storage to use Nomad?
- Can any of the other iPad models be used effectively in sculpting?
I just came upon this May discussion, and thought your comments showed that there is still some virtue in frugality. Thank you for any practical wisdom you can share with me.
Every Ipad works with Nomad Sculpt, even the older models.
The Pencil is also important for the Ipad.
6 GB Ram or more would be important.
And the larger the display, the more fun.
Otherwise you can’t make a mistake with the purchase.
You are bound by your budget, so the only options are a used Ipad Pro or a new normal Ipad…