I have the feeling that there’s a dumb answer to this question, but I’ve gone through Blender for Dummies and a couple of internet tutorials and I’m just not seeing it. :spin:
What I want to do is a raised motif that will wrap around a pillar (see attached pic). What I did was to model the design with Bezier curves, then convert it to a mesh, add appropriate subdivisions so that it will deform nicely, and extrude. I then used a Curve Modifier to get it to wrap around the pillar. Problem: Now I can’t the deformed mesh to look smooth when rendered without using bunches of subdivisions, and it’s slowing me down to a crawl when I go to render. The subdivided mesh is a pain to work with, too. Set smooth and subsurf make it look funny, and recalculating the normals doesn’t help.
My thinking is maybe that I shouldn’t have converted it to a mesh at all, but rather left it as a curve and then applied another Curve Modifier. So I tried to model the design with NURBs (since Bezier won’t tolerate 3D) and while I can produce sharp points (by changing the weight) and straight lines (by changing the order), I don’t want ALL my lines to be straight–just some of them. But when I change the order I lose all curviness. So, I’m not sure what I should do. Making the design with a Bezier curve converted into a mesh has bogged me down in Renderland Swamp. Making the design with NURBS seems to be impossible.
Can a more experienced modeler lend me a piece of advice on how to handle this situation? 
