Help with topology on my model (flat surface with cutouts) ?

xhi

I'm working on a table, however I'm trying to make it perfect as far as topology.  On the left side is what I started with and on the right is what I've been doing.



I keep trying to find info about using triangles on flat planes and most resources say not to, or not to have long thin ones.  What are your thoughts on triangles on flat surfaces?

I'm also unsure about using more than 4 edges going into one vertex on a flat surface.

I'm also looking for tips on reducing polygons.  I know some basics like this here 

Any help is greatly appreciated.  I try to do everything on my own but I've been reworking this piece for 6 hours and really want some professional opinions.  Thank you so much!!

Brian "Panda" Choi

Seems like you're going in the right direction!

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but really the only thing that is stopping you is if the lighting in a game engine freaks out over a particular area of the mesh.  Hence the mentioning of "avoid long triangles if possible."  I've done long triangles before on my character models' props, but as long as it lights well, you're fine.  But good practice overall to avoid it when possible.

Keep going!  I think you have the right idea.  Just maintain the silhouette as much as you can, and you should be good in the right direction.

3dReaper

Like Brian "Panda" Choi said you are headed in the correct direction.

Some good tips to keep in mind:

If the geometry/edge loops do not contribute to the actual mesh definition or its silhouette then most of the time you should try to optimize down.

Triangles are 100% ok especially on your low polygonal mesh. When a mesh is taken into a game engine, the engine will triangulate the mesh regardless of how perfectly you have your quads. In some cases it is better to triangulate some of your mesh manually as it is possible the mesh will show shading errors, clipping, or deform in some odd way once the game engine does its magic. You will most likely not have to worry about manually triangulating a mesh regarding hard surfaces.

If you plan on subdividing your mesh try to stay away from tris. Quads sub divide and maintain edge flow much better.

Long thin triangles should be avoided. In some instances a game engine may have problems with extreme cases of thin and long tris.

Jaywyr

Hi, it's a good workflow, now I think that is the past !
Now we use a chamfer for made  high poly and a less retopology for low poly.
You can watch this workflow here https://gumroad.com/timb (there is a free tutorial)

Zodd

There's some great advice above, just wanted to second the "no need to avoid triangles in low poly", and the right half is definitely on the right track regarding reducing polygon count.
Maybe you can further reduce the amount of edges that define some arches and rearrange the vertices so they conform to the concept.
Definitely wouldn't worry about tris tho, if they shade bad or cause other errors then yes, but this is rare and obvious when happens

theblueturtle_

These guys are right on the money. Silhouette and the way your target engine/ renderer likes to display non-quads are your main concerns I'd say assuming that your model remains completely flat and never deforms. To reiterate what @3dReaper said you may want to make special considerations for your mesh if you plan to do zBrush work. Triangles and n-gons don't "mesh" well if you try to subdivide them... See what I did there? Anyone???



You may want to have a version of the model that has all quaded faces just for sculpting purposes and a second version that's more optimized for the final scene.

Zelfit

theblueturtle_ said:

You may want to have a version of the model that has all quaded faces just for sculpting purposes and a second version that's more optimized for the final scene.

Sounds like it is not very time-efficient. He can always dynamesh it.