Triangulation

glaive

Hi everyone,

So I have learned this from different sources that you need to triangulate your mesh before publishing for a game. Please correct me if I am wrong at any point. I am very new to the world of game graphics. What I want to know here is:

1. Should I triangulate my meshes if I am going to sale them as "game models"? Why I am asking this is because once they are triangulated, they would lose some flexibility in re-editing the models again. And in most cases the customer, whoever downloads such models, wishes them to retain this flexibility for future use. So what am I supposed to do under such condition?

2. If I use triangulation, when exactly should I do it?

• Before making UV?
• Before baking process?

One more point I must mention and that is, I am using 3Ds Max 2009.

CrazyButcher

You normally don't need to do this at all, only make sure that (if necessary) the vertex shading looks right in viewport. Sometimes that means turning edges inside the quads/ngons.

Typically the mesh is automatically triangulated when exported. Cause actually it is always triangulated internally anyway. You just don't see the "inner" edges visible all the time.

So I wouldn't bother with it at all, and as you said keep the model in an edit friendly format.

glaive

Thanks for the info. This would help a lot.

almighty_gir

the reason why i (personally) triangulate is to make sure that both target engine and export both have exactly the same triangulation.

in max i'll use a triangulate modifier (non-destructive) and export the mesh for baking down normalmaps etc. and keep the modifier there for final export to engine, that way i'm absolutely certain that everything is in sync.

Eric Chadwick

If you're baking a normal map, you should triangulate the in-game model before baking the map.

You might have three different programs that use that model: the modeling program (i.e. 3ds max), the baker (i.e. Xnormal), and the game engine (i.e. UE3). If one of those triangulates the polygons differently than the others, this can cause the tangent basis to change, which can cause normal map shading errors in-game.

Best to triangulate non-destructively, like almighty_gir says.

glaive

Sorry for the delay in replying. Thanks Eric Chadwick and almighty_gir. So there still are necessities for triangulation. Yes I am baking my models inside 3ds max. And before that if I want to triangulate my model, can I simply use "Turn to poly" modifier and use "3" in the value slot? Or is there a better way to get it done?

Eric Chadwick

Yep, that's good.