Hello, I'm fairly new to Blender, and this is my first post in this forum, so..... please go easy on me...  ^^;;

I loosely followed this tutorial to create my half-head.  (I don't want to make it a whole head until I finish tweaking the half to my liking...)  Now, I did some editing of the edges and vertices (nothing new) only this time, when it rendered, the edges look really sharp and faceted.  I have the half-face object on 'set smooth' and some of it renders smooth, while other parts render sharp.  I don't know why it does this.   D:

Here is how my half-face looks in different views.

So, I guess my question is; what is going wrong?

AelisMikilai, it seems to me that triangle areas are worse. Usually I try to keep everyting quads (i.e. four vertex polys). I'm no master but I have read from others who are good with modeling that it's particularly good idea with subsurf (or any kind of SDS) to use quads.

But back to your pic, you can try to improve smoothing by setting Auto Smooth and playing with degrees (Deg:) setting. it only affects rendered pic, if I understand correctly.

Hmm...  But how can I make my tons of triangles into quads?Thanks for the input, I'll play with the Auto Smooth....  :)

That decision (tris/quads) must be done in beginning of modeling. 

Here's some explanation:

http://cube.phlatt.net/home/spiraloid/tutorial/modeling.html

I can't see your picture (it's gone now), but if you delete a bunch of faces that were smooth and fill them in with new ones they might become sharp again.  Either select all vertices in edit mode or select the model in object mode and hit "Set Smooth" again and see if that helps.

You can turn two adjacent triangles into a quad by selecting both and hitting "F"

Well, If I were to make an entirely new head, what techniques are best to keep the triangles to a minimum?

What I do:
I loosely follow the tutorial I linked to in the first post.  That is, I make a cube, extrude it into a basic head shape, and subsurf it.  But then, when I do my fine tuning, I select groups of vertices and subdivide them.  This creates those pesky triangles.

Is there a method other than subdivision to make small details, etc.?  Or is there a way to use subdivision while not making triangles everywhere?

Thank you so much for your help.  :)

 "Usually I try to keep everyting quads"

keeping everything quads is not necessary, the trick is to keep what needs to be quads quads and what needs to be a triangle a triangle.  you can look at it this way-  make a plane and subdivide it a couble of times.  now pick a ring of squares and extrude it once.  notice how in the outer corners at the bottom you have five squares meeting at one point.  on the corner at the top you only have 3 squares coming to a point.  on the inside corners on the top you have five squares meeting and on the inside on the bottom ou have three squares meeting.  if you think about that for a while you'll start to understand topology concepts.

as for triangles-  you should only use them for wrinkles that arent realy part of your main flow or wrinkles within your main flow but where you dont need the extra resolution everywhere else

I think I know what causes tris... Let me guess, you select face and say subdivide? That makes tris outside selection.

Use subsurface modifier instead of subdivision by hand. You don't need to add geometry so often.

(I try to find out proper tutorial for you when I have time...) :)

Uh, this may explain something:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Subsurf

dont use subdivide at alll, either use edgeloop subdivide by clicking r, or select just the edges in edge mode and click normal subdivide

oodmb, do you mean CTRL-r?

yah-  i've been so busy programing recently some of the hotkeys are starting to escape me.

No worries, I'm just confused myself. :)

I have to say that, unfortunately, the entire concept of edgeloops does little but confuse me.  o_o;;

What exactly do you mean "clicking r?"

Thank you all for your help and replies!

cntrl R on your keyboard allows you to subdivide a specific edge loop so that the flow isnt change and hopefully only 1 or 2 triangles are made

ctrl t convert quads to tri's

alt j tri's to quads

can be found under menu editing  (F9)  mesh,  faces.

so you can easily convert back and forth.