I work as an illustrator, and I’m whondering what is the fastest method for rendering my models, decimating the mesh (heavy, like 20% in decimation master) or use displacement map.
Some friend told me that displacement map acts like a real geometry, and maybe decimating the mesh it will be faster rendering, and better keeping the details.
I need an answer!!
Thnx from Spain
All depends on your system. If you have the RAM and CPU using a decimated mesh is typically the way to go…at least for still images. A decimated mesh doesn’t animate very well though, so if you’re doing animations you’ll want to use displacements.
20% isn’t really a measurement though. 20% of 20million vs. 20% of 2million 
Most 3D apps can handle 500k tri’s no problem. Others will take in 4-10million. It all comes down to level of detail you need to preserve.
Decimated meshes work great if you add a bump or normal map to them as well to help maintain any high frequency details you might loose during the decimation process.