Runtime Mesh Decimation: Is this the only tool for it?

I have a need to decimate meshes at runtime. Actually, i only need to do it at authortime, but it still has to be done within the editor, since the meshes in question are dynamically generated.. Theoretically i could export them, decimate them in blender, and reimport them. but that would be so slow, messy and destructive to workflow that i don't even want to think about it.

So i went looking for a tool that can accomplish this. And i found one:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/19183

This does appear to be exactly what i'm looking for, and more. But what i find worrying, is that i found one, And Only One tool for the job. that seems suspicious, there's always room for competition in a healthy market, and this seems like an inadequately supplied market niche. I also notice with some concern that there's only one review of it, which is rather vague, that doesn't inspire me with a lot of confidence as a buyer.
And even if it were perfect in every way, it's still smart to shop around and consider alternatives before buying. Smart shoppers make a good market.

Perhaps the task in question is so difficult that only one party has been capable of it yet, or perhaps there's simply not much interest. Perhaps this product is so good that nobody feels the need to compete, or perhaps developers simply aren't interested in more money. However i think the most likely possibilitiy, is that alternatives exist but i'm unable to find them because of the asset store's notoriously bad search. Certainly, searching for less specific terms like "optimise" brings a slew of irrelevant results, with no apparent means to narrow the search range.

So my next recourse is to ask you, the unity community, for your thoughts on the matter. Do you know of any similar tools that can accomplish the job? any search terms i could use? any freely available code, even.

my needs aren't too great honestly, the above program is probably far more full featured than i require (and also more expensive than i was hoping ) the meshes i want to decimate are pretty simple, and even a simple angle based algorithm could probably do the job

 

There are a bunch that do it in the editor, haven't bothered to see if they work at runtime.

imo the best is cruncher (requires pro), I have krabl (works with unity free), and have tried simplygon. I saw a new one for $30 on the asset store but haven't tried it yet.

I made a short vid of cruncher this morning for another thread:

 

can you recall the name of that new one?

 

Guessing Imbarns might be referring to SimpleLOD https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/25366 . I noticed it in the Asset forum just after it came out. I'm not sure how intertwined the mesh decimation and the LOD functionality are, but could be worth looking into. I briefly took a peak at it, but I bought Krabl in the asset store awhile back and it's been good to me, so didn't give SimpleLOD a thorough look (though I did notice there's some documentation on their website).

On another note, I too noticed some time ago that there isn't a lot of competition in that space. But decimation is certainly on the trickier end of things, so it's understandable.

Anyways, good luck!

 

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/25366

 

this thread is very helpful so far, thank you.

I'm investigating simpleLOD at the moment, it sounds like the most appropriate for my rather basic needs, and my rather limited budget