As you saw in the last section, the sphere was smooth and did not show vertices along its silhouette (in English, the outline looked circular and not like a bunch of straight vectors connected). In reality, that is, contrary to what you see on screen, 3D models are composed of straight line vectors and/or polygons—at one point of modeling or another, and not the smooth flowing shapes you might see onscreen. Why? Because 3D shapes can have hundreds of undulations along its surface, and it is most economical from a computing standpoint to create polygons to describe the surface changes in direction. By default, when you create a sphere for the first time in trueSpace, the sphere is made up of a lattice that are 8 in number up and down (latitudinal) and 8 units from side to side (longitudinally). Now, if we were to view this sphere from a sufficiently distant standpoint, it might look fine rendered, when its structure is of a resolution of only 8 by 8. However, as we've seen (up close) the sphere looks funky when this few number of vectors describe a purportedly smooth sphere.

Create a coarse (8 by 8) sphere, set the subdivision angle, and then perform a smooth quad divide on the sphere. Then render it and see how you feel about its smoothness. It must be said that if you are creating a sphere from the get-go, defining a high resolution is better than subdividing it later.