Question about rendering.

Hey everyone i am new to the forums and pretty new to blender, started about a week ago. Im taking a class on blender at my college and it is great so far but i have been working alot outside of class in blender and i am running into a problem. My problem is that i do alot of sculpting and here is how i have been doing it, either A, taking a circle and adding multires levels so i can get the right shape and edges i want in the sculpture, but i also want hair on my sculpting and from what i hear you can only do that on a UVsphere and to get the desired level of detail i have to turn the segments and rings waaaay up. I can make the model just fine, add the hair with relatively low lag but rendering takes a bit and thats just a standing still model with hair on it. I cant imagine im doing this right, i messed around in 3ds max and in 3ds once you were done with a model you could open this tool and run it and it would essentially take out all the unnecessary stuff, kind of like making your object as optimized as it can be so it would render easily. I dont think its my computer because im running a amd 1075t 6 core 4.0ghz and 8gb of ddr3 1600 ram. and a gtx 460. so i guess im just asking if there is a really easy way to optimize my models and particles so that a simple object doesnt take so long to render, i cant imagine how long a animated short would be with that model and others on the screen. Thank you for any help

Hey everyone i am new to the forums and pretty new to blender, started about a week ago. Im taking a class on blender at my college

They have blender classes at your college? :eek: What do you learn? And where is this?

My problem is that i do alot of sculpting and here is how i have been doing it, either A, taking a circle and adding multires levels so i can get the right shape and edges i want in the sculpture

I think you mean a sphere instead of circle? This sounds quite inefficient, eg. when you sculpt it helps when your mesh has a fairly uniform face distribution. I suggest making a low poly model, and then multires.

but i also want hair on my sculpting and from what i hear you can only do that on a UVsphere and to get the desired level of detail i have to turn the segments and rings waaaay up.

You can have hair particles on any mesh, the amount of particles can be controlled in the particle panels, and additionally with texture or weight painting, you dont need a high polygon mesh to have high res hair :slight_smile:

I can make the model just fine, add the hair with relatively low lag but rendering takes a bit and thats just a standing still model with hair on it. I cant imagine im doing this right

To me it sounds like you have a really high res model, then apply hair to it. I suggest making a low poly version and baking the detail. There are some scripts which can reduce your model complexity, but you get the best results doing it by hand.
Which version of blender are you using?

Yea im at Montana State University, they have a class on blender, we learn basics on how to model, animate etc. i assume i havnt got that for into the class or i would probably know the questions im asking lol.

. I usually make a sphere not a circle, pardon me, and then add multires. and how can you add hair to any mesh? when i try it says quote “particles can only be applied to the first level of multires” im using blender 2.49b, the one on the website currently , not beta. You are probably right in assuming im using to high of a poly count model, but i dont know how to tell if i am, and or how to change it to be less polys. And i dont need high res hair :stuck_out_tongue: im just trying to make a fuzzie creature lol. Thanks for any help.

Yea im at Montana State University, they have a class on blender, we learn basics on how to model, animate etc. i assume i havnt got that for into the class or i would probably know the questions im asking lol.
This is great seeing blender’s influence grow :wink:

. I usually make a sphere not a circle, pardon me, and then add multires. and how can you add hair to any mesh? when i try it says quote “particles can only be applied to the first level of multires”
Oops i misunderstood you :wink: Particles and multires shouldn’t be mixed, actually multires shouldn’t be mixed with anything, causes fun stuff to happen most times :stuck_out_tongue:

You are probably right in assuming im using to high of a poly count model, but i dont know how to tell if i am
Understandable, as there is no definition of what is High poly or low poly, generally when you model detail, that could be simulated with a texture i would consider high poly :wink: And when you are sculpting and using multires then it is definately high poly :smiley:

and or how to change it to be less polys.
Sh** i would like to help you, but it would take considerable time to make a tutorial…

Quick workflow explanation:

You make your high poly sculpt. Then make a low poly, the low poly model needs just enough polygons to ‘cover’ the high poly, eg. to represent all major features of the mesh. Then we ‘bake’, eg. take the high detail normals (or Ambient occlusion) and bake it into a texture map for use with the low polygon model :wink: Effectively faking the ultra high detail of a scultped model, on a low polygon model, which can then be animated or hair can be added :slight_smile:

Good read stuff:
http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-246/render-baking/
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Render/Bake

Making high poly to low poly, i suggest using the ‘snap to’ feature of blender, then simply vertex by vertex make a low polygon mesh, on top of the high :wink:

EDIT: I’m tired, the quick solution in your case would be to make the high poly, make a copy, turn the multires down to lowest, and apply (quick low poly). Then bake the normals to the low poly :slight_smile: