United3dArtists Archive

Ok, So a couple of quick questions that I am hoping can find some answers.

I hear the Polyreduction tool is very nice but I have not had a chance to use it yet. But, From what I understand this will reduce the poly count in your model and attempt to keep the same level of detail. I guess also you can generate a noraml map from the high poly model to apply to the low poly model to keep even more detail from distance.
1. does the high poly model have to be fully textured to generate teh normal map prior to poly reduction?
2. How well does this work is it worth the extra steps, (REduction vs quality)?

The second part of this is with REflection and Transperency are a drain on my renderer, and can increase render times exponentially. Is there a way to fake this at a distance or even up close?

same level of detail is wishfull thinking....
lets say it does a better job then the old tool.
but your first bet would be to avoid high poly count if you dont need it in the first place.
There was a good example for C4d a few years ago with different level of detail and they used a shark and applied
poly reduction. While they were able to keep the shape of the body up to pretty low reduction levels..
that shark had less and less teeth up till the point when it had no more...... but the body wasnt very much changed...

When you use a shader glass, time to render can be reduced if you change the property of the object with the shadow: don't cast shadow and don't receive shadow combined with a light who don't use transparent shadow reduce a lot the time to render. Also the value of the reflexion is important only if the object have a refraction (reduce the value for a best speed of render).
you can also reduce the MaxDepth of the raytracing option. The option are on the Panel/PhotoRender menu at the right of the screen (right click on the "render scene icon" of the modelside to show the Raytracing options. The option appear only if the bridge is "on" and it is not logical because these option are for the model side and ligthworks. after your change, you can select bridge "of" if you use only the modelside.