According to an aspect of the disclosure, a method of generating a low-poly mesh for a three-dimensional (3D) model is provided. In the method, an edge-collapse operation is performed on each of a plurality of edges of an input mesh to generate a simplified mesh in which a number of faces of the input mesh is reduced by the edge-collapse operation. A position of at least one vertex of the simplified mesh is updated to generate an updated mesh in which a distance between the simplified mesh and the input mesh is reduced. The low-poly mesh is generated based on an aligned mesh in which positions of vertices of the updated mesh are optimized by minimizing a shape difference between the simplified mesh and the updated mesh.