When and Where to have triangles?

paulchen83

Hi guys,

I'm using maya/mental ray. I've been modelling for a couple of years now but i'm still confused regarding when and where is it ok(or not) to have triangles. I heard that some renderers like Renderman requires the geometry to only consist of quads, and lots of people have been telling me that if you showcase a model with triangles in your demo reel, people will assume that you don't know how to model. So, knowing about hiding triangles or re-topo-ing to make quads, my question is:

a)what if making the affected area all quads just ends up adding a lot more resolution when carefully placed triangles do the job and better without creating noticable artefacts.

b)And must we always hide the triangles in obscure places if it doesnt add any noticable artefacts to the geometry surface?

c)and (forgive my ignorance)what are the renderers or engines out there that can only accept quads?

hopefully there are people here who understand why i'm confused. i'm not a beginner btw, but its these kinda doubts that set me back in speed and productivity. Thanks in advance.

s6

Well, it would help a great deal to know what your models are going to be for. For instance, If you make a game resolution asset, It will be entirely Triangles. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but most if not all game engines will either triangulate your mesh on import, or require they be triangulated before hand. In this case, Every face on the mesh is a triangle, And no one is going to give your grief about them, Cause its a game model. That's how it goes.

So what is your field? and what are you're assets/models/renders going to be for? Deforming game model. rigid game model, High poly, Render only item, etc. It all depends on the use of the model. I'd imagine with that information, Someone here can check off those points you've listed there

gray

the style of the mesh and layout changes depending on where you want to use it.

there is no contemporary renderer that cannot render tris and quads. the main issue is are you going to subdivide the model and render in an offline renderer. or are you going to use the model subdivided in a game engine. for subdivision you should stay away from tris if you can. but you can still render them. for a game model tirs are not much of an issue.

a) if your rendering with subdivision then stay quads and add res. for an engine do the tri.

b) yes you should try to hide tri's for subd.

c) all renderers i am aware of can render tris and quads.

ZacD

Triangles are fine on subdivision models, just be aware it it can cause smoothing issues. Using tris on flat areas wont cause any issues.

The biggest rule is to avoid using triangles in areas that deform.