Having a hard time knowing the proper way of modeling for games

JohnnyN

So I've generaly casualy lurked over some basic theories about making models for games, and I've come to the point where I'm conflicted on many things.

The basic issue I currently got is, should a polygon contain no more than 4 vertexes?

here's a quick demonstration of the 2 different ideals I keep getting, which one would be a technical correct one?

Chase

The first is how you should be modelling. Dividing up edges into 4 sided polygons, known as quads, helps rendering I believe. Triangles are also ok.

sprunghunt

These two examples will both be the same number of triangles. Game engines do not render quads or n-gons. All assets will be converted into tris when you export.

I'd do the one on the left just because it's less likely to break when it's converted into triangles and is just easier to work with.

have a close look at the robot wireframe from this UDK screenshot

RH_wireframe_SS26042011 by sprunghunt, on Flickr

You can see it's all triangles. I didn't model it in triangles. It was converted.

JohnnyN

I can't thank you enough, this gave me tons of more insight.

cryrid

If the triangulation on the right was left automatic, I imagine there could be some pretty thin, fanning triangles in the end.

Angry Beaver

Read up on sub-d modelling practices, while not strictly needed for polygonal modeling the challenges they face and the solutions they use can be quite the education on how to create and manage shapes even with polygons.

spectre1130

I always try and get very clean quads in my modeling just because most say this is the way to do it. Game engines do convert to tri's, which is just a quad divided in half. Sometimes a few tri's are fine on a base mesh because the engine will just divide that into 2 more triangles-albeit at making the end result 1/2 smaller than the rest of your polygons which could cause shading/material issues???. In games it make a difference I think. In movies and such where everything is pre-rendered, quads and such don't matter I don't think as the renderer's in 3d programs like Max and Maya don't care as long as the geo is not totally whacked.:poly142:

BARDLER

Like the others have said, video games render everything in triangles. When you model you want to stay mostly in quads because it makes it easier, but you will also have a lot more control over HOW your mesh is triangulated. Auto triangulating an ngon can have some undesired results, and also waste a few triangles.