Railings on a boat

[peder]

Hi,
I'm have a problem wit the railings on a boat i'm modelling.
I have made a cage of two point polys representing the railing for the project im working on this would be good enough if it was'nt for the fact that in the current state the railing does not cast a shadow.

What is the easy way to give my railing depth without skyrocketing the polycount?
(I tried extruding the railing on the three axes witch left me with 37000+ polys :-(


Peder

[peder]

Here's an example from one of the smaller deck's railing.

[peder]

Does no one hve any tips for me?

:-(

peder

[mattclary]

Using 24 sided disks you can make this with 676 polygons. Use the disc tool to draw a long rail and a short rail. Start arraying and mirroring.

[Ralph Keyser]

It sure seems like you should be able to do it with fewer polygons than 37000. How close are you going to have to get to it? At a distance, I've gotten away with 12 sided discs (even less sometimes) and a smooth texture.

[peder]

I can manage with a 4 sided railing. I was more looking for a tecknique for more or less automagicaly :-) creating the railing (with 4 sides) based on my 2 point poly structure shown in the image above.

Peder