Ordering of Modifiers

Is there a correct order you should place your modifiers in when speaking of rendering? Will your render time/processor load be affected based on order that the modifiers are placed in the stack? Also, is it better to apply modifiers before rendering or not?

Often, yes. For instance, if you do a simple subdivide before a smooth, your smooth has to operate on more vertices than if it was done before the subdivision. But it will also have different output.

Applying modifiers can often speed rendering time. If you do a laplacian smooth with 100 iterations, that’s slow, but once you write it into your mesh, none of those calculations have to occur. But of course, it comes at the cost of losing reversibility.

Ah, so modifiers aren’t as simple as I previously thought. It’s a good practice to think about how they will be calculated in the rendering process then?