hey all i have a kinda slow computer and im making an animation with many people on and they are quite high poly and at the moment with all these people on at once it lags like crazy so i was wondering if there is a way so when in non renderd each person is only like 100 faces but in render theyll be full detailed
Fudge
If you are using subsurfs set the 3d window subsurf value to 0 (the left of the two values, right one is the rendering subsurf value). Make sure your not in shaded or textured mode. Solid mode is pretty fast but wireframe is the fastest. In some situations I have even resorted to just using bounding boxes for parts of the scene I wasn’t interested in. Put some of your animated objects on another hidden layer while your working on other parts of the animation. You can use scenes in some situations to speed things up as well (composite them in the sequence editor later).
You can also copy one of your complex objects and use the decimator to reduce the poly count. Link this mesh temporarily to your complex object. You will have to link the other (complex) mesh again before rendering however.
I too have an older machine PIII 450 with a geforce2 
GreyBeard
majorlly of topic but if you were to upgrade I would go with an AMD processor.
Now back to topic. Fudge Greybeard hit the nail on the head once again. Your very helpful Greybeard.
I wouldn’t.
and why not?
I wouldn’t.[/quote]
too bad, the cost difference is really worth it
I’d suggest that fudge make some stand-in geometry instead. as in, put the mesh on another layer and simply use 6 or 8 sided cylinders for limbs [in another mesh, intended for previews]
hi thanks greybeard thats what i wanted (decimating) but im not sure how to link it so it renders the high poly)
thanks fudge