Is this bad topology? Zot

Zot

Hello,

I am not a specialist in topology and wanted ask: is this fine for low-poly topology?

I mean broken quads, messed topology - like 6 edges from a vertex and combining triangles with quads.

Thank you for help in advance.

PolyHertz

Technically it should be ok for static props, but anything that deforms must have proper topology.

Also, if you're working on a portfolio piece it's best to show potential employers you can create clean optimized meshs when need be.

Zack Maxwell

Bad topology can interfere with baking and shading, too. Things like long triangles are bad for that reason.

Alex_J

The "how the fuck do i model this ?!?" thread is a great place to browse through to pick up nuggets of knowledge concerning stuff like this. 

CreativeSheep

It's bad topology. 

Klaudio2U

Quad topology is good but "brute force" the quad topology is not good which means to try to avoid extreme long thin faces or/and extreme non-planer faces(that face on first image is quad but extremely non-planer which even goes from one side of the model to the other and looking like an arrow and not square-ish) as well as massive poles (lots of edges meet in one vertex).

Zot

Thank everyone for support, I was learning zbrush and pipeline: sculpt -> retopo -> bake -> paint. Here is what I got for now.

I tried to make as little tris as possible, but not sure if topology is good and what to do to correct it.

Farfarer

In general it'll probably work alright, although it could be a lot cleaner. There's a fine line when doing retopo work between being slavish to the surface being retopo'd and fudging it a little for a cleaner resultant mesh.

One thing worth noting, though, I would generally recommend avoiding near-concave or concave polygons where possible.
- Concave polygons like that labelled quad in the top image.
- Near-concave polygons which have three vertices in (or very near to) a straight line, like the lower right polygon in the circled area of the second image. There's a couple of these visible in the post above, too.

Cases like that will generally cause the worst issues if there's any triangulation mismatches.
- Concave polygons, I'd manually break it into triangles to ensure that it triangulates the way you expect.
- Near-concave polygons, I'd either move the middle of the aligned vertices out of alignment with the other two to create a clearly convex polygon or manually break it into triangles.

And to repeat Klaudio's suggestions above... personally, I'd break any highly non-planar polygons down into triangles as a matter of course. Although this can kind of come down to a matter of preference and if the edge flow in that area is critical then maybe skip them or wait until the end to triangulate them. And avoid long, thin polygons where reasonable, especially when they're non-planar.

poopipe

You have mixed up convex and concave

Farfarer

Ugh, I have. For shame