So can Maya not work with Ngons?

CodeferBlue

EDIT: So I recreated the mesh exactly the same way and I noticed that when I bake the booleans down into the original mesh, I get edges in 2 of the corners of the mesh to support the ngons as @icegodofhungary suggested:

If I then select all hard edges and bevel, they bevel as intended. If I delete those 2 support edges (probably what I did originally), they give me problems. So I've learnt that I shouldn't remove the provided support edges to make my life easier when trying to select all hard edges on the model, instead I should just use a script to select all hard edges after baking the bools down and then bevel. Thanks for the advice peeps. Here's my result:

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I'm trying to create modular scifi assets and my workflow consists of using booleans to concept and create cool shapes, then while still having ngons, bevel hard edges so I can use face weighted vertex normals. Then texture the asset using a trim sheet and finally quadrangulate the mesh before exporting to Unreal. I quadrangulate the mesh at the end because if I don't, when I face weight the vertex normals they will take unnecessary quads into consideration and not give me the best shading, if that makes sense.

My problem is that Maya seems very ngon unfriendly when modelling. Here is a floor panel mesh I try to bevel all hard edges on:

And here is the strange result:

I've played around with all the visible settings like 'Subdivide Ngons' and 'Miltering', regardless, I get a broken result. I'd love to jump into Modo and use that as its very ngon friendly but a lot of game studios around me (north west England) tend to use Maya. Am I going to have to ditch my workflow?
Appreciate any help.

icegodofhungary

It can handle them to an extent, but you have to support convex ngons. Waiting until the end to auto-quadulate everything doesn't seem like the best workflow in any pipeline. I feel like you would run into a lot of errors regardless. You can still use face weighted normals and bevels in maya. You just need to support the geometry you're trying to make  with quads or tris. It almost looks like you have a laminar face on the bottom of your object, more than the ngon messing things up.

huffer

Maya lets you have non-manifold geo pretty easily and you'll get a ton of errors with it. It's also hard to fix. Maybe you can try the quadremesher plugin as an intermediary step before beveling, so any problems are fixed.

CodeferBlue

icegodofhungary said:

It can handle them to an extent, but you have to support convex ngons. Waiting until the end to auto-quadulate everything doesn't seem like the best workflow in any pipeline. I feel like you would run into a lot of errors regardless. You can still use face weighted normals and bevels in maya. You just need to support the geometry you're trying to make  with quads or tris. It almost looks like you have a laminar face on the bottom of your object, more than the ngon messing things up.

Thanks for the response. The whole point is that I can concept and model dynamically without committing to the model this way. If I was to start fixing the topology as I did boolean operations, I wouldn't be able to concept with the model because I'd be undoing my work all the time. Sergey Tyapkin, a lead artist that does a lot of sci-fi stuff uses this same workflow. He concepts in 3d using booleans and ngons, then bevels all hard edges then quadulates everything after face weighting vertex normals. Difference is, he's using Modo and its tools don't depend on the geometry to be quads/tris. It makes things much simpler:
https://youtu.be/dTrI8GD3yms?t=18

And I don't just quadulate then export to game engine. I clean up at the end before export to make sure there aren't any long thin tris and stuff. As long as its a hard surface mesh and its not going to deform, the mesh being quad/triangulated before export does the job. 

For lamina faces I did Mesh>Cleanup, I also checked for "zero length edges" but unfortunately that wasn't it. The ngons are causing the issues because if I quad/triangulate before bevelling, I don't get that same issue. Instead I run into another issue where the edges bevel weirdly because everything is tri/quad. 

CodeferBlue

huffer said:

Maya lets you have non-manifold geo pretty easily and you'll get a ton of errors with it. It's also hard to fix. Maybe you can try the quadremesher plugin as an intermediary step before beveling, so any problems are fixed.

Yeah I agree. Also, with the remesher, if I want my resulting hard surface mesh to keep forms sharp and straight,  I needed to have the geometry count pretty high which would then require me to spend a lot of time getting rid all the unneeded polys.. Appreciate the help. 

ant1fact

Concave ngons don't work very well in any software in my limited experience. You can always make some cuts here and there, connect a few vertices to support your workflow - it will not take a lot of time I'm sure. At the same time I wouldn't worry too much about software & workflow. You know how to use Maya and that's a skill that is good for getting that job you want. Now you can go and do your portfolio piece in whatever software because at the end of the day if you do land that job, nobody will care about your workflow - most of the time you will just follow whatever workflow the studio has already established.