I have a fairly simple rocket ship and I added some portholes. To make the portholes, I used an icosphere, compressed it on one axis to make it look like a lens. I then made a frame by copiing a circle made of a pipe that I had made from a Bezier circle and another circle to use as a path for it. Then I took the compressed icosphere, duplicated it and shrunk the new object so it can go on the circular frame and look like the head of a bolt. Then I used SpinDup to create a number of other bolts around the frame.
I know this is a lot of small objects when you add all the bolts on the frame. I have other objects that are made similarly. Once I added a few portholes, it slowed down any movements or processing. I tested this by moving the rocket body to another layer and copying only a couple other objects to that layer. It was okay until I put these portholes on that layer. Once I added 2 portholes, it slowed down any operations I did.
I’ve made other objects out of multiple UVspheres and they haven’t slowed anything down before. Is there something special about icospheres or icospheres rescaled in only one or two directions that would slow everything down? Is it possible I changed a setting I forgot about that has slowed everything down?
It turns out the problem was not actually the portholes (as in the windows in the portholes). I’m still getting used to Blender and thinking like Blender. After reading your post, I realized there were so many bolts (36 per porthole, 6 regular portholes, one hatch based on the same model, and one stretched one for the cockpit) and each one was a mashed icosphere that I had set for at least 3 subdivisions, so yes, there were a lot of vertices. I removed 2/3 of the bolts, leaving 12 on each porthole, the hatch, and the cockpit. It actually looks better because the bolts stand out more and there is very little delay in any actions now.
Thanks – I’m still learning the obvious and I’m VERY thankful the Blender community is so open and helpful!
3 subdivision icospheres, ouch! Generally the fewer vertices you can get away with the better. The add mesh defaults are generally way too vertex heavy. I routinely turn down the vertex count on tubes, circles and UV spheres to something like 8 or 12 instead of the standard 32.
Removing 2/3s of the bolts solves the problem, great! You might want to do some experimenting, though, with 1 or 2 subdivision icospheres, with 1 level of subsurf and set smooth applied to them. Another thing to try is cut the spheres in half. (The ones your using for the bolts, I mean.)
You probably won’t want to go back and do a lot of fixes on something that’s working, though, just something to keep in mind for the next model.
As I read your first reply, a lot of those points did occur to me. I considered deleting the points on the back of each icosphere, especially on the bolts, but it would be a nightmare, even with only 12 per porthole (total of 84, including the hatch and cockpit). The back side vertices would be hard to get to since they’re inside a tube and I’d have to keep the tube there to be sure I know which vertices to delete.
If I were doing it now, even a week later, there are already other ways I’d do it. While I’ve seen subsurf in tutorials, I was not completely used to it, but tried it on another part this evening and it worked just fine and made a huge difference. I will certainly bear in mind what you’ve said about the default vertex counts.