---
title: "Subdivision Surfaces in Blender"
canonical: "https://rmanwiki-27.pixar.com/space/RFB27/544638001/Subdivision%20Surfaces%20in%20Blender"
format: markdown
---
![RenderManBlender_PedalHeader.JPG](media://559ea5d1-c930-4334-b103-f798305c0bc1)

RenderMan Subdivision Surfaces use [Pixar’s openSubdiv](https://graphics.pixar.com/opensubdiv/docs/intro.html) which ensure you always render the smoothest and cleanest geometry. This avoids rendering artifacts which may occur due to poorly tessellated polygons, such as dark edges and outlines. 

Using RenderMan subdivision surfaces is the preferred way of working, but RfB also supports Blender’s Subdivision Surface modifier. However, note, that for RenderMan this will be an inefficient way of rendering subdivision surfaces, as Blender calculates more faces than RenderMan.

Using RenderMan centric workflows also ensures a light viewport, as you’re only incurring subD costs at render time, freeing up valuable GPU Vram otherwise spent on your viewport.

See [Subdivision Surfaces](https://renderman.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/REN26/pages/19661421) for more information.

> ⚠️ You may also use polygons with no normals defined and then subdivide, RenderMan will compute the normals for you.


## RenderMan Subdivision

The preferred way to render subdivision surfaces is to use the **Convert to RenderMan Subdiv** operator. 

This can be found in the viewport RenderMan menu. Any selected mesh will be converted to a openSubdiv surface.

![RenderManBlender_SubD_2.jpg](media://a0507e79-561f-4ffe-a2df-3875445a6f09)

You can see in this render, that the guitar pedal is now rendering with subdivision

![RenderManBlender_SubD_1.JPG](media://dd7fc6ac-9892-4087-8e9f-8421df1fb39f)

Alternatively, you can turn on or off RenderMan subdivision surfaces, by going to the mesh’s data properties and changing the Scheme setting under Subdivision Mesh. Selecting None will render the mesh as a polygon.

![RenderManBlender_SubD_3.jpg](media://f888e3b4-7780-4757-9a86-682b267f24fc)


## Adding Creases

RfB also supports Blender’s edge creasing. Here, we are adding crease weights to the selected edge.

![RenderManBlender_SubD_4.JPG](media://6ea7ff9e-6343-40c9-95a6-ace526ee44f4)