Beginner Guide for Efficient Modeling I'm fairly new to Blender and 3-D modeling in general.  I created my first model and was pretty proud of it.  However, when I finally thought about it and noticed it, I decided 400,000 faces may have been a few too many.  So to my question:

Does anyone have a basic set of rules and/or a guide they follow as they model that will help lead to proper technique and efficiently rendered models? Triangles vs Quads, when to (and not to) subdivide/subsurf, is there anything wrong with making a high-res version and decimating/shrinkwrapping after it's done?  

Like I said, I'm a beginner so I want to make sure I'm doing things correctly and won't be forming a bunch of bad habits I will have to correct later.  So a step by step workflow, or tips on things to avoid, etc.  I've been doing a lot of research, but haven't found this type of information broken down well.  I don't necessarily need a large amount of detail - just a basic list to act as a guide of more things to research as I model.

(It is worth mentioning that most of my models will be used in a realtime application, so I am aware I have to get my polycount WAY down)
Your question is a duplicate of:

Best practices for learning Blender

You might also check:


https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&amp;channel=fs&amp;q=blender+best+practices&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Avoiding_Headaches_Early_On:_Good_3D_Modeling_Practices