Good Modeling Practices?

junfanbl

So I am looking for some advice and guidelines on modeling in general. I am not a newb, but I feel like like I still have a lot of room for improvement. Specifically, what are some good guidelines to consider for keeping your model topology nice and clean.　 Some things I have learned are:　 1. Avoid creating N-gons (a polygon with more than 4 sides)　 2. Try and keep a good topology flow: If you don't know what this means you should consider doing research on it. I am not the best at explaining it.　 3. All faces should be planar; as in the vertices that make up the face should all be on the same level. 　 And well, that is all I have so far for guidelines on keeping your model topology clean. As you can see I have much to learn...　 Can anybody suggest some other good modeling practices to consider to help make clean topology?

jaker3278

Creating N-gons is fine in certain situations, so dont feel you can ever create them. As in when you export a mesh to a game engine the mesh will be triangulated so as long as the Ngon triangulates okay you have no problem. Also when creating High polys as long as in smooths okay you are fine. There are situations where you will inevitably have them.  

I suggest you watch some tutorials on different modeling methods ie low , high , mid, poly modeling, like this one by Alex Senechal https://gumroad.com/acms

Nyawning

my advise is to model, model, and model even more; you will face many problems, solving them is how you learn, and that's what i'm trying to do right now 

Dan Powell

You can use N-Gons for subdivision modelling, but generally speaking, you should avoid using N-Gons when the model has to be handled by multiple programs; different renderers triangulate meshes differently, and this can create artefacts if your renderer handles the triangulation of N-Gons differently to your 3D modelling package. As a rule of the thumb, triangulate your low-poly/game-ready objects - but don't worry about the high poly topology.

Edge flow is important for controlling smoothing, but again, if no one is going to see the wireframe, in practice, it doesn't have to look pretty - just functional, and efficient. 

A good practice that people often overlook (which isn't directly related to modelling), is to save increments/versions of your work. I usually make a new file increment every time I make a major change, or every few hours: Something like Filename_01, Filename_02, etc. works.

xChris

I would buy Mark Van Haitsma's bask kits (there's a free one up as well) so you can get a good feel of how you shouldn't be limited to perfect quads.  https://gumroad.com/mvhaitsma

Also follow Tor Frick and check out his modeling, never in perfect quads either. Don't be afraid to use triangles, if your working on props/environments, you don't have to worry about having perfect topology, unless its something that needs to get animated and needs got stretching and pinching in certain areas.