The impossible N-Gon problem

Fricetix

Hi guys. I'm working on a small project for my portfolio which is the Kiev 4 film camera and I ran into a problem with a seemingly unsolvable N-Gon.

This is the N-Gon I'm talking about, that big poly in the middle (duh)
As you can see below, it's very detailed, I'm going for the high poly count.

But when I smooth it, the wireframe looks awful and I don't think it would be nice to put that in the portfolio.

Here's that part on the camera:


Does anyone have any ideas how I can make this mostly quads?
I tried many thing like connecting vertices across the model but that's also impossible because of the angles. I really have no clue, never had an NGon problem that big.
Here's the .obj if you want to try it out, just make sure to keep the form of the object same, only adjust topology, these smooth edges need to stay smooth:
http://db.tt/ZmOIVh3G

Thanks guys,
David.

Michael Knubben

Does it look good?

Great! You don't have an Ngon problem!

I would widen your bevels a bit, however, these won't show up very nicely in a bake.

Fricetix

So you think that can stay like that for portfolio? I mean, it looks great until you see the wireframe haha
Yeah, I know about that, I just wanna model the whole thing and then tweak it afterwards.

CyberGameArts

Since you have inset the N-Gon and you have a supporting loop running around it(kinda like a containment edge :P) it really doesn't matter if you wanna bake it down(Like MightyPea said, loosen up the edges a bit). However if you really want to show the wireframe of the Hp in your portfolio than you can always inset it another time and just connect the edges to make it look pretty; it wont affect the smoothing.

Eric Chadwick

If this is a model for baking normalmaps, don't worry about the wires. As long as it shades and bakes nicely, that's all that matters, and experienced artists (the ones reviewing you for employment) will all understand this.

If it needed to deform like a character model, or it needed to be tesselated on the fly for displacement-mapping, then that's a different set of rules, and this kind of topo would suck.

If you have shading errors, you could connect some edges across the middle of that ngon, break it up into smaller ngons. You could also weld some of those edge-loop terminal verts without causing shading errors.

Fricetix

I have no shading errors, everything looks fine, I'm just gonna make that NGon a bit prettier for the wireframe showoff and tweak the bevels. Thanks for the tips, guys!

passerby

really no one gives a shit about ngons being in your highpolys, as long as it shades fine it is good, and you are follow the main rule about ngons which is to have them on a flat surface which you made with the inset.

if your worried about wires, just use the cut tool to hand cut a few edges across the face.

EarthQuake

Yeah, do not waste your time worrying about this. Nobody cares. Nobody is ever going to fire you/not hire you because your highpoly sub-d wires look "messy".

You're being obsessive about this.

As for your model here, you need to work on your edges a bit, they're all too hard at the moment. If you plan on baking this down to a lowpoly with normal map, fatten up those bevels and it will read a lot better.

WarrenM

"Well, his work looks good but, man, dem high poly wires. Gotta pass..."

Yeah, no.

Meteora

I understand where you're coming from on the concern, but as long as it doesn't introduce any shading errors it will be fine (usually flat surfaces). There are also strategic use of N-gons (pentagons) to avoid pinching. Obviously this is also not going to be put into a game engine so N-gons will not be a problem.

SnowInChina

actually, the problem itself is also very easy to fix
just cut through the top until every face is a quad..

but like everyone said already, if you only use your highpoly for bakes, noone cares how there wire looks as long as the onject itself looks fine