Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
In what program?
Sorry.. D|S .. I want to make a ball, anhored dead center, then apply a grid to it to grow and shrink, not unlike the "light area" for a pinpoint light.
well the more geometry, the smoother. SO more sub-d, or more segments(when you make the sphere), or more smoothing iterations. All three would do the same thing for you.
You can add the sphere and then under Edit>Object>Geometry choose to convert to subd. Then you can keep the sphere low poly and set render higher so it only renders smoother.
What I've got is sections 60, sides 60, and that seems to look good for my needs, but I have no idea what it is polygon wise....really can be as few polygons as needed, so least memory hit there can be.
If you look at the bottom of the Scene pane, there is another window with the Headings 'Tips' and 'Nodes'. Select the Nodes one, and that will tell yu how many Polys and Vertices that the figure contains. A 60 x 60 Sphere primitive is 3,600 faces according to my Nodes pane in DS.
Click on the little bar that lights up yellow at the bottom of the Scene pane to unhide this extra pane, same as you would do to unhide any other panes.
are you using it for a light source? (if so, don't)
if not than 4k polys isn't a lot. Cept if its for a game, then you might want to tone it down depending on your target.
I prefer to use a cube with sub-d at level 4, this gives a sphere shape with polygons all being the same size which seems to give more even light when converted to an emitter.
No, it's a non-rendering radius ball for measurement needs...
is the 60x60 good? is it overkill?
What are "sides" and sections "sections"?
I tried a 6 sided sphere...shouldn't that have been a cube?
If you want to measure there's always the Measure Metrics plug-in.
I'm not looking to measure people and figures, nor am I looking for other measurement suggestions...I'm trying to understand the sphere primative options.
Switch your display to 'Wire Texture Shaded' then you will see in the Viewport what each option does to a created sphere.
AH! That helped a lot! Thank you.
SO, for lack of better terminolgy... Sections are the number of collums and Sides is the number of rows. (or verticle slices and horizontal slices). In the case of spheres, the # of polygons is the 2 numbers multiplied.
So, for the current project, I just fine the smallest combination that works for me.
IF, however, I'd like to make a perfect sphere..like for a mirror ball...what is the combination people have found working well?
If you want a faceted mirror ball, you can select the material and set Smoothing to 0. That will display the facets (like a mirrored disco ball)
Usually you don't need as many sections as sides. A 3:2 ratio of sides to sections is what I aim for. How many sides you need depends on how big the sphere will be and/or how close to the camera.
Seriously...How many times do I have to ask "What are the settings to just make a perfectly round sphere? "
Is thus, as I infer from Maclean's post, that I add a smoothing modifier? That seems..like it would cause a performance hit, especially if you use a lot of them..
Is what I'm asking just not possible? I mean, I've seen perfectly round spheres...an awful lot of them are rendered on checkered floors.
So far I've been questioned why I'd want such a thing, recommended to get a completely different product that has nothing to do with spheres, explained how to get the opposite of what I want...
I guess next I'll try Jestmart's suggestion of "a cube with sub-d at level 4, this gives a sphere shape with polygons all being the same size ". I've never messed with "sub-d" but I'll give it a try since in a thread with two moderators and a PA who SPECIALIZES in making objects, apparantly no one uses the sphere primitive to actually make spheres.
I honestly don't know what the challenge was. Spheres are easy. I don't know what the issue is with any of the methods mentioned.
In 3D, I guess there is no truly perfect sphere, as it will always have sides. The higher the density, the smoother it is. How smooth you need will depend on the project. For some a sphere that is 60 polys may be plenty, someone else may need 4k polys. Maybe a million for someone else.
What methods are you using and what is your issue with them?
Why not do a bit of experimenting yourself?
Use various different combinations of polygons when creating the sphere, pace it on a chequered surface, apply a Chrome shader and see if it suits you. Any sphere made of polys as larsmidnatt has said, will always have sides, BUT, the render engine applies smoothing as well, so don;t go by what you see in the Viewport, which is OpenGl, render it out and see what you get.
There's no such thing as a "perfect" sphere. Computers don't do an infinite number of anything. The closest we can get are estimates.
From my first post: I can't hit all nice and smooth That implies experiments and failures.
Other than Jestmart's cube...there were no methods mentioined.
(EDIT: I had gone thru the whole thread with explantions for the problems with each reply...I decided it wasn't appropriate for a thread where people are trying to help. I'll pm the list if you're curious. The breakdown is that Lars and Chris offer good Step 2's, but no step 1s, Jimmy gives great tips on how to learn information needed, Jestmart gives good suggestions regarding the topic, and Richard advertises for completly unrelated products.)
All I asked for was simply recommended settings that people have found good. but that very basic information was never given.
Even after I said what I was making, and asked if the settings I had chosen were too much for the needs, nothing like "If it's not being rendered then you don't need that much" or "that'll work fine"
And while I greatly appreciate the information giving, and the folks doing their best to help me out....except for the advertisement.....it's now 3 days later and I, and future new users doing searches for information on the sphere primative*, do not have any suggested settings from more expeirenced users.
* (Which is why I made the title very explicit to the topic, rather than a generic "help" and posted in "New Users")
Please post a picture of your sphere. This way we can see the problem. I didn't think there was a need for a step one, as you already stated you made spheres. The specifics of the sphere aren't as important as they may seem. Once you start applying either Smoothing or Sub-D the intital numbers it won't matter as much.
As we have mentioned there is no perfect sphere. So the best we can hope for is what works for our use. Which may change scene by scene.
When I need a sphere I make one, and pick the amount of sides I think I want. When it needs to be smoother start with the defaults which are actually pretty high. I think 12 and 24. Then add a layer of Sub-D. Some use Smoothing instead. This is smooth enough for most of my uses. If it needs to be even smoother, I would add another layer of sub-d. Or maybe some smoothing.
I don't think you need precise numbers to accomplish your goal. Adjust the settings and visually look at the sphere to see if you are happy. What problems are the less than perfect sphere causing you? Does it look bad in a render? Please post images.
How big is this sphere? The bigger it is, the more sides you will need. If its only the size of a dime, really small amounts of segments/sides will be fine. if it is the size of a bus, more sides are needed to give the illusion of smoothness.
Here is my Sphere, 1m, 12 segments, 24 sides. 1 level of Sub-D added.(edit >geometry> add sub-d)
Left is viewport, right is render. As I said above, for the CURRENT thing, I don't need anything great..fewest polygons, smallest footprint as I can go. This is a non-rendering sphere for light placement design. It's concievable there could be many of them in a scene, and I might put a smaller one inside to have a fall off start measure, like the point lights do.
Which is all that was requested :) Thanks.
Because of the triangles at the poles of a sphere I never add Sub-d, it can cause a puckering effect that is easily visible in bright light settings. If this is just to define the boundaries of a light as little as 12:12 seems enough.
Wow..You're cube method just pops right into a sphere..that was pretty cool to watch...
Comparing a 12x12 to a cube convert, you can definitly see a difference in looks.
However, looks aren't as importnat as memory hit for this particular thing...how do I interpret the difference in faces:
Cube-subD 4: 6/1536 -- polygon tool shows still 6 large polygons, but i understand each subD level splits the 1 into 4
vs
12x12: 144
So in terms of memory load, performance, issues.. is this a comparison of 6 vs 144 or is it 1536 vs 144...(And I guess am I thinking about this the correct way? like the sub-d levels add performance hits by needing constant processing beyond the polygon ammount)
With those kinds of numbers, performance isn't going to be an issue. Unless you have hundreds of them.
The advantage of sub-D, is you can turn it off when you don't need it. Or lower the sub-d. You get a rougher object, but better performance.
If you make a 12x12 sphere, you can't reduce the poly count. So it uses a fixed amount of resources.
In reality I don't think you will run into an issue with a sphere with those numbers. It takes my machine about 10 million polys before it breaks daz studio(my video card really is what dies). I normally only use about 3 million with a Genesis2 figure sub-d @ 3.(high poly hair, clothes, backdrop, etc) Genesis2 starts about 20,000 polys, a lot more than that cube or sphere.
Where can you find how many total is in a scene? It would be good info to start learning.
Window>Panes(Tabs)>Scene Info.