Add Detail / Geometry or raise Polycount - An Easy way?

[crdave]

I've recently been venturing into the field of product display rendering. One of the major problems I'm running into is that some models have just too little detail.

If I were building the whole model from scratch I'd just change the number of sides in a circle or arch, but a lot of times I'm working with models or elements that were done by someone else or for some other purpose.

For example, in this picture is a stock blender model that comes with sketchup's pre-installed component library. The hidden lines are visible so that you can see the surfaces used to create the round surface are very low-poly and when zoomed up close the details look very poor.

Is there an EASY way to add detail to the surface so that the curves are smoother?? (That's to say, without having to re-do the model manually.)

So much of the talk when rendering is about reducing poly-count but is there a way to increase it?

Thanks a million!

-David

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[cbuchert]

You're thinking of something like subdiv levels in 3DS Max, right?

[mac1]

There programs for interpolation and decimation and SU plugins for the same . Do a search for subdivide and smooth and you should get hits for both free and $ su plugins. The $ one has a free trial period. Can you post the model of your post?

[pbacot]

The way some of these components are made (unrealistically, with parts all in one component etc.) will still make it "not easy" to fix up sub-par models for PR closeups.

[Krisidious]

These two might help you out.

Artisan
http://artisan4sketchup.com/
tgi3d
http://www.tgi3d.com/index.php?Page=Amorph%26amp;