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)
When I get an idea for something I'd like to make in Blender, I hit up Google for specifics, then blender SE when I get stuck.   I'm very overwhelmed by the immensity of Blender and I'm a little afraid that this self-directed approach is going to lead me to develop bad habits. Is there a "best practice" way of learning to use Blender?
Ways to evaluate $\int \sec \theta \, \mathrm d \theta$ The standard approach for showing $\int \sec \theta \, \mathrm d \theta = \ln|\sec \theta + \tan \theta| + C$ is to multiply by $\dfrac{\sec \theta + \tan \theta}{\sec \theta + \tan \theta}$ and then do a substitution with $u = \sec \theta + \tan \theta$. I like the fact that this trick leads to a fast and clean derivation, but I also find it unsatisfying: It's not very intuitive, nor does it seem to have applicability to any integration problem other than $\int \csc \theta \,\mathrm d \theta$.  Does anyone know of another way to evaluate $\int \sec \theta \, \mathrm d \theta$? How do I fix inconsistent Textarea bottom margin in Firefox and Chrome? QGIS 3.4 : Add points to exact locations? I would like to add several coordinates at specific British National Grid Easting and Northing values. I know this can be done by bringing in a .csv, but I want to know is there a way to manually enter the numbers in QGIS 3.4, and then the point moves to that location ? I've read that in QGIS 2.x there was a plugin called Numerical Vertex Editor that doesn't seem to exist for 3.x ? Do not show the score for users during primaries I believe that showing the post score for nomination posts during primaries is a bad idea.  When I loaded the primaries page during the election, the first thing I saw was a post voted -1. This immediately colored my impression of the post. Reading his post didn't indeed make me wish he was a moderator, but at the same point I couldn't bring myself to click on the down arrow. He wasn't an awesome candidate, but he wasn't a -2 score candidate either. Actually, I kinda wanted to sympathy upvote instead.  I want to judge by myself whether a candidate is worth or not my +1. For some of those people I don't have an opinion already, and I want to form one on my own. I don't want game theory to kick in, I don't want to be tricked into sympathy upvotes.  Having those numbers in large print as the first thing I see about them honestly prevents me from doing so. I'd rather have their avatar there.     Some people on chat do not agree with me;  I imagine they'll post explaining why I want to be aware of their opinion while forming my own.      Regardless of the discussion here, if you do prefer to hide the scores as you vote, here's the jQuery oneliner that does just that:  $(".vote-count-post").hide() This is a  about Hosting multiple SSL websites on the same IP.   I was under the impression that each SSL Certificate required it's own unique IP Address/Port combination. But the  is at odds with this claim.  Using information from that Question, I was able to get multiple SSL certificates to work on the same IP address and on port 443. I am very confused as to why this works given the assumption above and reinforced by others that each SSL domain website on the same server requires its own IP/Port.  I am suspicious that I did something wrong.  Can multiple SSL Certificates be used this way? Convert particle system to animated meshes Where do I find the maximum node? A lot of people recommend to use the maximum node for glass setup, but I can't find that node. Nothing comes up when I search for it.  Where do I find it? Two particles with initial positions and velocities $r_1,v_1$ and $r_2,v_2$ are interacting by the inverse square law (with G=1), so that  $$ {d^2r_1\over dt^2} = - { m_2(r_1-r_2)\over |r_1-r_2|^3} $$ $$ {d^2r_2\over dt^2} = - { m_1(r_2-r_1)\over |r_1-r_2|^3} $$  (the inverse square law along the line of separation). What is the complete solution of these differential equations? What is the position of the two objects as a function of time?  After reading a lot on Wikipedia, I've come to the definition of center of mass and relative coordinates:   $$R(t) ~=~ \frac{m_1 r_1 + m_2 r_2}{m_1+m_2}$$  $$\ddot{r}(t) r(t)^2 ~=~ (m_1+m_2)G$$  Where $R$ is the center of mass, and $r$ is the displacement between the particles... Is this correct? How do I proceed to solve the differential equation? Ideals in valuation rings How do I prove the fact that for any valuation ring $V$ the ideals are totally ordered under inclusion? What's interesting in latus rectum? I'm a maths teacher in Italian secondary school and I've been spending some time trying to construct "meaningful" problems about conic sections. I particularly like problems which focus on practical applications of the curves (in engineering, physics, finance, etc.), on their geometric properties, or both.  I know there's this really easy formula to find the latus rectum of a conic from its key parameters. It's quite nice and straightforward to derive it, but...  ... What's its use? Why should anyone be interested in knowing the latus rectum of a curve? Is there any physical phenomenon, any architectural trick, or anything else where its position and/or length plays a key role?   I know just the relation between angular momentum, standard gravitational parameter and latus rectum in an astronomical orbit ($l=\frac{h^2}{GM}$, where $l$ is half the latus rectum, and $h$ is the ratio between the angular momentum associated to the orbiting body and its mass). It's cool, but a bit tricky, and probably too far-fetched for secondary school students... Is there anything simpler? Or just anything else, at any difficulty level?  Many thanks! What has been proved about the big bang, and what has not? Ok so the universe is in constant expansion, that has been proven, right? And that means that it was smaller in the past.. But what's the smallest size we can be sure the universe has ever had?  I just want to know what's the oldest thing we are sure about. What’s the rule for using “who” and “whom” correctly? array package: problem with >{declarations} in preamble: Extra alignment tab has been changed to \cr I have a document that uses both the longtable and the array package. At first I ascribed the problem to an interaction of both. After testing, it seems array is the only culprit.  Here's a minimal example.  \documentclass{article} \usepackage{array} \begin{document}  \begin{tabular}{p{0.4\textwidth}&gt;{\raggedright}p{0.4\textwidth}} 1 &amp; a \\ 2 &amp; b \\ 3 &amp; c \\ \end{tabular} \end{document}   It produces the error  ! Extra alignment tab has been changed to \cr. AutoFixture with AutoMoq and concrete object injection How can I reflect a transparent background? I'd like to make a glossy surface which reflects objects above it, but that also reflects a transparent background in the final render.  So in effect, the final render would contain only the reflections, not the surface itself.  Is this possible please? sum of double precision gives weird results Convert XML/HTML Entities into Unicode String in Python I'm doing some web scraping and sites frequently use HTML entities to represent non ascii characters. Does Python have a utility that takes a string with HTML entities and returns a unicode type?  For example:  I get back:  &amp;#x01ce;   which represents an "ǎ" with a tone mark.  In binary, this is represented as the 16 bit 01ce.  I want to convert the html entity into the value  u'\u01ce' F# insert/remove item from list I am trying to create a directory that will house all and only my PDFs compiled from LaTeX. I like keeping each project in a separate folder, all housed in a big folder called LaTeX. So I tried running:  rsync -avn *.pdf ~/LaTeX/ ~/Output/   which should find all the pdfs in ~/LaTeX/ and transfer them to the output folder. This doesn't work. It tells me it's found no matches for "*.pdf". If I leave out this filter, the command lists all the files in all the project folders under LaTeX. So it's a problem with the *.pdf filter. I tried replacing ~/ with the full path to my home directory, but that didn't have an effect.  I'm, using zsh. I tried doing the same thing in bash and even with the filter that listed every single file in every subdirectory... What's going on here?  Why isn't rsync understanding my pdf only filter?    OK. So update: No I'm trying  rsync -avn --include="*/" --include="*.pdf" LaTeX/ Output/   And this gives me the whole file list. I guess because everything matches the first pattern... How can I tell what RAM will fit my computer? If I want to add more RAM to my computer, how can I buy something compatible? What kinds are there? How do I determine which kind my computer will accept and how much I can add?