Thank you for all of your help! I realize now that the optimization function simply was not intelligent enough to weld the vertices where the original elements of the 173 mesh came together. I went back to the original mesh and manually welded the vertices where the elements met before applying the multires (optimization) modifier, and the resulting mesh should be the same polycount as the one we are currently working on, but without any seams. Looking back I probably should have realized this earlierJuicy wrote: Good work, it has less holes but I've been testing it and I found a few, I'm going to send you a PM with some screenshots

EDIT: Juicy pointed out a little texture oddity which arose after welding the vertices. The fixed model can be downloaded here http://www.mediafire.com/?vbe279stc7sfryt