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How many faces for a smooth surface?

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I have revisited the question of how many polygons are required to create the illusion of a smooth spherical/cylindrical surface. To this purpose I have created, using Blender UV Sphere as the basis, several pill-like meshes with different number of vertices. The image shows the results of the test.


The top row shows the meshes, the second row the result of rendering inside Blender Cycles, the third row the result of rendering inside Poser's Firefly and the last one the result of rendering using DAZ Studio 3delight.


The results show clearly 3 different regimes: low quality, high quality and a transition between the two.

  • 8 faces is very crude, game-like, and has significant shading problems
  • 10 faces is somewhat better than 8
  • 12 faces reduces the shading problems to an almost tolerable level
  • 16 faces is the middle ground between low and high quality
  • 18 faces is artifact free on all but the closest scrutiny
  • 24 faces shows, under close scrutiny, very faint signs of polygons
  • 30+ faces is, even under close scrutiny, undistinguishable from fully smooth surface


It is interesting to notice that the 3 different render engines handle in a very distinct way lower resolution meshes but, as soon as we enter the smooth region, the results are very similar. This reassures that a sufficiently high poly mesh will render well regardless of the rendering engine.


Final recommendations:

  • for "main character" meshes 24 faces
  • for non-"main character" meshes 18 faces
  • for significant non-foreground meshes 16 faces
  • for non-significant non-foreground meshes 12 faces

Needless to remark, the above values are to be adjusted for other modeling considerations. E.g., if a mesh is the base for something with a 5-star shaped outline, divisible by 5 poly counts are in order (15 in place of 16, 20 in place of 18, 25 in place of 24 and so on).

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