Now I may be way off on this but this is how I understand how it works.

Take a poser figure for example. As mentioned above, you can select each body part. So if you select the arm you have all the parts of it as usual. However, the place where the arm connects to the body (shoulder joint) is also a side. That side has to be calculated with shadowing lighting etc. Now turn that one joint into many with each finger part,hand, knee, ankle toes etc. That is a lot of extra sides. However when it is simplified into one object, those extra sides no longer exist. This would save on calculation time as since it is not rendering shadowing etc for those parts as well.

Again, this is just how I understood it. I may be way off. :)

Message edited on: 03/29/2005 14:52