Need Help Merging Theses Two Shapes

anthonybp

Hi everyone,

I need help merging those two shapes while having a good topology. I just don't know how to set up my two shapes for the merge. I tried many techniques, but there's always something wrong when I switch to smooth preview.

Thank you !

Here's the image :

anthonybp

That's pretty much how I managed to connect the shapes (unsmooth topology below) :


But, with this kind of topology I need to add the control loop by hands, because it does things like that :

poopipe

Ngons are your friend in this situation.. Simply lose the awkward edge.. 

anthonybp

poopipe said:

Ngons are your friend in this situation.. Simply lose the awkward edge.. 

Urgh, I don't know how to manage ngons...

Alex_J

topology is not there to look pretty for its own sake. its like the frame of a house -- it serves a purpose. So you got to no what it's purpose is.

Will you be subdividing this mesh? Is this the game res mesh? The goal is going to inform you what to do. If you are going to subdivide and the n-gon spooks you, well why not just go ahead and subdivide and see what happens? If its the game model, just do a test bake and take it into engine. If the topology just doesn't look as clean and neat as you'd want, continue forward and let the latter processes teach you if it's really a problem or not.

I wasted a lot of time as a beginner trying to conform to "rules" that I didn't really understand. The sooner you start experimenting, the quicker progress you'll make as you won't be hung up on technicals very long. You just have to get over this mindset of, "I don't want to make mistakes and do things twice." That is a good attitude for production, but not for learning. In learning, you should make all the mistakes.

Sage

You can try to make your geo flow like this.

Here is a video of how I did it. It shows all the steps and issues I ran into.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucf7omIKCK4

anthonybp

BIGTIMEMASTER said:

If its the game model, just do a test bake and take it into engine. If the topology just doesn't look as clean and neat as you'd want, continue forward and let the latter processes teach you if it's really a problem or not.

Thank you for your advice ! I'm always caught up in the wheel of perfection. I'm currently working for my portfolio and I want to have the best topology I can. But anyway, what do you mean by "test bake" ? If my topology has ngons, it will clearly look bad in the game, right ?

Alex_J

Try it out and see for yourself. Some people say n-gons are no-no, other people say they are your friend. How will you decide?

Test bake means that, if you have a concern about how your details are going to bake with a certain topology and/or UV layout, you just go ahead and do a bake to see how it's gonna turn out. A lot of times in 3d you have to work things iteratively -- in other words, you don't expect it to work perfectly on the firs try and expect to do some problem solving.

The question, "is this topo good or bad?" is too simplistic. Instead, "does this topology serve it's purpose well, or not?" is a better question. And of course, to answer, we have to know exactly what the purpose is.

musashidan

N-gons are fine in the modeling stages when you understand topology. All quads/n-gons are automatically triangulated in every real-time engine including your baking environment. This is the reason they are 'bad'. You want to maintain full control of your final topology so you ensure that every triangle is baked/rendered as you intended.

Don't get caught up in the toplogy of your high poly. It doesn't matter one bit what it looks like as long as the surface is smooth/looks clean/shades nicely. This is the sole purpose of your high poly.