Poly number for high quality rendering?

[bioclone_ax45]

Hi, I was looking for some orientation and (if anybody knows about any site) additional information about what amount of polys should be considered "acceptable" for rendering animations.

My knowledge on rendering its really vague, and im still getting all the pieces together about the textures...

Until I get better on rendering I would like to have some numbers in mind to just dont waste time doing objects with such amount of vertex that never will be interesting to be used.

I ask this because to get  nice details on close ups to some objects Im lately using a lot tesselation or turbosmooth... and with my rendering knowledge Im not too sure if the huge render times sometimes I experiment can be caused by the amount of faces of my stuff or just dumb rendering setting.

[ads_czechoj]

You can use few million polygons and render it, but your renderer may slow down with textures, lights, animation.

The main reason of not creating models with a huge number of polygons is simple... the economy.

You may render one frame few seconds or few hours, it all depends on lights, textures and number of polygons.

Always plan your scene and add details only there when you need it. 

Example: you can model an amazing baroque table with 2-3 millions of polygons, but you will render only the still live on it with close-up shot. What you need is a box with 6 polygons and reflective varnished wood texture on it. The texture will look the same as on 6 million polygons table but it will render in few seconds instead of few hours.

Use Normal Maps to reduce rendering time. This means, you need to create two models: a high poly for the map and low poly for the render. 
I hope this few info may help you with your scene planning.

[bioclone_ax45]

Thx for the reply!

Yes I know that ussually "the  lower, the better" but im that kind of guy that just "suffers" seeing faceted faces on rounded edges (aside smoothing) so It gets hard to me  to consider "when is enough rounded or when I can consider adding more detail.

In my case I will be doing cinematic scenes of enviroment and props of stuff that will share properties with our point of view... not "zooming in on small details" or "long range panoramic shots"...

Depending on the stuff I model I try to keep a decent amount of polys, but still looks hard to choose.

I know also about the normalmapping/displacement using both high poly and low poly versions of the same item, but I suppose that, of course, requiere a perfect Unwraping so I consider to try to do that later,  once most models are 100% finished.

Just to provide an image, this would be a building and a vehicle... I know an image doesnt show very well the number of polys but I guess can be seen what Im talking about, wondering If im just wasting resourced for not detail at all... or if it is decent... anyways I always try to keep lower poly version saved or the main shapes before using heavy modifiers like tesselate.... however when I require to collapse the modifiers to add details in is when the doubts whisper to my ear xD

[ads_czechoj]

Great! Thanks for posting the images! I can see one major problem: you are using TurboSmooth, MeshSmooth or OpenSub-Division to make nice corners on box-based geometry. This will add may unwanted and not needed polygons. Please consider using the Chamfer modifier instead. It will give you rounded corners without adding thousands of polygons to your scene. BTW. Our new 2020.1 Update is around the corner and you will see a few significant improvements to the chamfer modifier.

[bioclone_ax45]

yeah, thx, Its what im now trying, I did just noticed about that modifier and the update on a topic about chamfers and I still need to try it. Im actually  on the 2018 version :S

Right now I used turbosmooth and tesselate, later I remove some faces, however of course is way worse.

[kgokhangurbuz]

Hello @bioclone_ax45 ;

@ads_czechoj had great points and information above, and i'd like to add some tips for you.

-Less is better, always. This is why there are workflows for retopologizing and texture baking from high-poly models.

-Avoid rendering objects with modifier stacks (Converting it into a polygon / mesh, etc.) Objects with modifier stacks take more rendering time due to RAM usage.

-Glossy reflections, camera effects, simply any kind of blurring effect that is added during rendering increases render time.

-If you need to point out geometric details, you need to increase rendering parameters which will take more rendering time, thus you need to bake textures to create height maps, normals, etc.

These are what i can simply tell now, if you need further assistance, please do not hestitate 🙂

Kind regards;

[bioclone_ax45]

Thx, I am now using more chamfers what will work for a more rounded edges... however for some other things, such the vehicle I did post, I really like the way tesselate maked the shape "flow" and Im now trying to figure the best aproach to get something closer to what tesselate+turbsmooth does but creating less faces...

Im still wondering if removing by hand poligons/loops would be acceptable or not... (too much work to over with a sighly lower count)...  You could notice I ussualy do a low poly-basic shape of one prop and then I use a mix of Tesselate (ussually with 0% tension) and later turbosmooth, so the first one helps me to make turbosmooth focus on the more "edgy" areas... 

I tried to imitate this behaviour by just using tessellate and some relax on some points... also experimented a bit with "spherify" or the chamfers, what seem to move closer to what I liked from that tesslate+turbsmooth but still is not that good.

If someone has any other way or modifier that could fit on what Im trying, please say it...  

PS: I did upload some screens on the Wall, where Im already happy with chamfers as for "blocky structures" I was only interested on smooth the edges (even if those could get better later by editing the normal maps)  Left one is the last one, while the 2 on the right were the old ones.

[Anonymous]

Chamfering the hard edges, and al;so selecting low-poly quads, and using Editable Poly (right-click model, convert to editable poly, press 1 for vertices, 4 for polygons, etc, 1-5 for sub-objects,) and i personally use Quick-Slice on hard-surface models to speed up the modelling process... even on game-ready lo-poly models, sometimes you just need to hand-pick what to tessellate, instead of automatically smoothing an entire model or piece. Quick-Slice will add a division in the angle you choose, clic k once to start slicing, adjust angle, double click to end the slice, right click (  i Right-Clickk empty space multiple times to end slice.)

That will give you more control and on something like a conveyor belt, if it isn't smooth enough at first, i would use quick-slice to divide the mesh and manually update the curves