I know a noobie question, but I cut my teeth in Rhino 3d where with NURBS a cirlce is a circle and then rendering engine took care of the mesh details. Working with poly's is requiring a differnt mindset.  from what I have read smoothing averages the angles of two faces, I am thinking  a 180 faced cyclinder would result in an seemenly perfect cylinder. 90 faces would degrade it twice as much and 45 faces four times as much. So 65 faces might be the magic number for decent renders with out noticable faces or edges. Or am I over thinking this?

An uncapped cylinder with 8 sides will look smooth in something like Poser. In Blender, you can use low poly meshes and make them look buttery smooth with subdivision surface and keep them low by turning the subdivision surface on and off at will. You can also adjust how much subdivision you want. It's in the modifiers panel.

Laurie

Depending on the size, I generally use from 16-24 sides and in Poser it renders pretty smooth.  Turning Smoothing on in Blender will give you a fair idea how it will look in Poser.  You could always make a few test cylinders at about the size you want with 12, 16, 20, 24, 28 and 32 sides to see how they look.  Just make them, line them up in a row, export as a single obj file and import into Poser.  Hit render and see what you have.

It also depends on how close you intend to get to the cylinder. For pipes I've gotten away with 3 sided cylinders and some creative bump/displace/normal mapping.

For sturdier modeling I ussualy go with 9, 18 or 36 sides so I have a nice clean 40, 20, or 10 degrees of arc per polygon.

What if you don't  you do not know how the end user is going to use the model? Is there a good setting that keeps the quality up and file size low at both distance and up close?

look at what the mesh is and if it fits into the category of will be visible then spend the polys and make it look good

if it will always be hidden drop the count

i mainly model vehicles and expect them to be rendered extremly close up so i make every detail but most people need low poly items so shoot for the market you want to cater to

look at what the mesh is and if it fits into the category of will be visible then spend the polys and make it look good

if it will always be hidden drop the count

i mainly model vehicles and expect them to be rendered extremly close up so i make every detail but most people need low poly items so shoot for the market you want to cater to

Suggest making a few test cylinders with a range of sides then import them into Poser for a test render. Try with Poser's smoothing on and off.

Then try different scales.

A rope may only need to be 6 or 8 sided but a table top would require many more.