When unwrapping uv's for hardsurface models, is it ok to have tris on the flat planar sides?

Travis C

or does it not matter? I'm going to be using headus uvlayout.

Someone told me that I should have my hardsurface model in all quads before unwrapping.
Problem with that is that I need some tri's in there if I want it very low poly. 

If I need all quads before unwrapping, are there exceptions where it is ok to have tris? Like maybe on flat planar surfaces?

AtticusMars

It doesn't matter.

Quads can maybe help you unwrap faster because you can select edgeloops and use things like follow active quads in Blender but it isn't going to make any difference what so ever in the quality of your unwrap. None at all.

Travis C

AtticusMars said:

It doesn't matter.

Quads can maybe help you unwrap faster because you can select edgeloops and use things like follow active quads in Blender but it isn't going to make any difference what so ever in the quality of your unwrap. None at all.

alrighty, thanks!

Eric Chadwick

Yeah also your model is going to be all triangles in the end. Some good info here
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Polygon_Count

Travis C

AtticusMars said:

It doesn't matter.

Quads can maybe help you unwrap faster because you can select edgeloops and use things like follow active quads in Blender but it isn't going to make any difference what so ever in the quality of your unwrap. None at all.

wait, how badly would it effect the speed of the unwrap? I need to unwrap something really fast

Obscura

You'd loose the ability to quickly select loops, rings etc, so technically it can affect the speed so much.

AtticusMars

Travis C said:

AtticusMars said:

It doesn't matter.

Quads can maybe help you unwrap faster because you can select edgeloops and use things like follow active quads in Blender but it isn't going to make any difference what so ever in the quality of your unwrap. None at all.

wait, how badly would it effect the speed of the unwrap? I need to unwrap something really fast

By the sound of it you've got very few triangles in your mesh so I cannot imagine it is going to make any real difference. We're talking a few extra clicks, maybe not even that depending on where your triangles are.

It would be a different story if you were unwrapping a mesh that was entirely triangulated. I don't know what Headus has feature wise but even then... in Blender at least you have path selection so even without loop/ring selection it is probably trivial. I would only be concerned if you were using something like Follow Active Quads since afaik it will not work with triangles. But again... how bad it is depends on how many triangles you've got.

Bottom line: I seriously would not invest any energy into worrying about it.