Out of curiosity, which is worse on a system (takes more time to render) several items with transmaps or something with a slightly higher poly count? I've heard statements either way. As someone who continues to increase their skills in modelling I generally would like to know what people prefer. For example plants that use transmaps for leaves look fine and are lower on poly count but I'm sure that it has its drawbacks for some. What if it was the same plant but the leaf was sculpted to shape and didn't use a transmap - it would mean more poly's.

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you can do transmap and bump maps leaves that are one poly per leaf. to model that in geometry would take a lot of polys for the same apparent detail.

am example would be a grille for a car, modelled will be heavy geomerty, transmapped is fairly light.

its better if leaves are done by instancing but Poser doesnt do that.

Conclusion: if you want closeup detail model it, otherwise bump and transmap.