When you render a scene, the number of faces in the scene model directly affects rendering time: The greater the number of faces, the longer the rendering takes.
The tutorials in this section use trees as an example of objects with a high face count. They show you to ways to reduce that count: By turning trees into particles, a method you can use with either renderer; and by turning trees into mr Proxy objects, a method that applies to the mental ray renderer.
Trees set up as “particles” to render a wooded area in a short amount of time
In this tutorial, you learn how to use particles behaving as “billboards”: Each particle shows a bitmap tree image that can render quickly, while a twinned particle casts the shadow of the tree.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to use mr Proxy objects to create a scene of a forest that, despite its large size, can render quickly.
