# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Cheat the 3D

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## Ways to Improve Performance

In 3D Graphic Design, there are many issues to consider. First, consider
how the project moves, how the project performs. Next, consider how you
create objects in your project, especially when working with meshes and
lighting.\

### Mesh

**Modifying an object\'s properties**

When you add a modifying property to an object, the computer has to
calculate that property every time it moves in the animation. These
modifying properties include soft bodies, particles, or mirror textures.
They can significantly slow down the computer.

To make things move faster, pre-calculate and \"bake\" the modifier into
the object. To bake a modifier, such as a soft body movement, save the
modifier as a permanent animation. That way no matter how the object
changes, it moves the same way. As a result, your computer does not
calculate how the object moves. The move is already set.

There is a drawback. If the object moves and hits another section with
different slopes, it will continue to move as if it was in the original
baking site. You will have to calculate and bake the section again to
get new results.

**Making 2D backgrounds**

Scenes will have a foreground, background, sky, and more.

Your computer will take more time to render a scene that is big, open,
and filled with modeled objects. This wastes time and memory, especially
when modeling an object far in the distance. I\'m guessing however, you
do not want to make a quick, plain model. So what do you do?

That is easy. You make a 2D background.

-   Put the distant image or background on a plane.
-   Verify that everything on the plane around the image is black.

If it is not black, set the Alpha to 0 if the image was saved in a
format that supports Alpha. This will retain the detail but reduce the
number of faces the computer must count in the scene.

-   Set the image to Billboard to prevent the image from skewing by
    perspective.

### Materials

**Using UV maps**

For those who do not know the term, a UV map is an image applied to a 2D
plane. The 2D plane is then applied to the mesh.

Here is how to create a UV map:

-   Spread out the image onto a 2D plane.
-   Apply the 2D plane over the face of the mesh using the 3D view.

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