smoothing groups?

[Dave Buckley]

guys, trying to import 3d model from autoCAD, got all my settings great as far as i can see apart from certain parts that appear like in the screenshot.

 

at the minute it's at curve steps 100, smooth angle 15, maximum s.deviation 0.005

 

it currently stands at 500,000 polys approx.

 

if i drop the surface deviation to 0.001, it goes to 2,000,000 poly's approx.

 

there isn't much difference between the two tho, and 2 million poly's on one object is rather large. it does need to be high res but not that high res. i also need 8 copies of it. so i'm going to texture one high res one, create a material for it, save material to library, convert object to proxy and the proxy it into my scene for the 8 copies.

 

its basically chairs around a board room desk

 

but any help with fixing the facets is good, i've never really got into smoothing groups as i don't do much modelling if i'm honest but now i am

[danb4026]

You do not need to go high in poly count.

 

Smoothing groups will do the trick.....Select contiguous poly's that you want smoothed together, go to Smoothing Groups and select a number. Then if there are more areas that you want to smooth, once again select the contiguous poly's and select a different number under smoothing groups.

 

This will smooth over only the areas that you chose.

[Dave Buckley]

so is that the correct way to use smoothing groups???

 

what happens when i run out of numbers?

[danb4026]

There's lots of smoothing group numbers....I have never run out.

 

Is it just chairs? How many? Will they be instances of each other? Is each chair that many poly's?

[Dave Buckley]

one chair is 500,000 poly's, its a manufacturers model made for manufacture, so contains, nuts/bolts/screws etc etc. i will clean it. but i don't see what difference it make if i'm proxying an array of them around a table??

 

as long as i do one and texture it correctly.

 

i'm sure i won't run out of smoothing groups

 

was just checking if that was the correct way to use them