Hello! I started learning Blender about six months ago and recently subscribed to CG Cookie to follow a more structured learning path. That said, I'm still very much a beginner.
The biggest challenge I've faced so far is efficiency. Specifically, when I model or sculpt, my polycounts often end up being extremely high. Since I’m using a Mac, rendering these high-poly projects feels like a massive drain on both time and resources.
As I’ve progressed and revisited some of my earlier projects, I’ve noticed that I can now achieve the same results with a third of the polycount, which also significantly improves rendering times. However, I tend to render in high resolution, and with excessive polycounts, it takes my computer ages to complete.
While I understand that every project is unique, I’m wondering if there are any universal practices or general guidelines to follow for keeping polycounts manageable and optimizing rendering efficiency. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
I've always heard said, no SubD modifier should be above two. So two levels of subdivision should be enough if your base model is constructed appropriately. Also maybe I'm wrong, but poly count I don't think it makes such a huge impact on render times, more often than not the impact is on memory. Render times go up in complex scene, specially low light one on closed up rooms where you have a lot of noise and the engine needs lots of samples to clean up. When rendering the trick is to find a balance between having too many samples or too low. At a certain point you're shooting samples to an area that is already clean and you're wasting time and power.
So when it comes to poly count, it's more about easily manageable models and memory. A good model is the basis of any scene you're rendering, if it's modeled badly it'll show up in lighting and reflection on its surface. Again I might be wrong, the others guys will have other insights, but render times it's not going to have a huge impact because of your poly count.
I can only repeat what Omar said.
I would perhaps also refer to the CORE Lightning course. It shows a lot about rendering and render performance.
There is also this post on Polycount/Topology, which may be helpful
https://cgcookie.com/posts/the-art-of-good-topology-blender