Some basic modeling tips for a Tram game model???

Hayden Zammit

Sorry if this seems like a stupid thing, but I've got a few questions about poly modeling that I was hoping one of you more experienced guys could answer. I'm working on a low poly tram game model. I've included a pic. At the moment, everything is quads because I normally do high poly and was taught to generally keep it to quads. With game art I've been told a lot of different things though. If you look at the pic, I've highlighted some areas. With those edges across the top that the black arrows are pointing to, should edges like that be removed? And with the parts colored yellow, at each end there is a face, but it can't be seen because its inside other parts of the tram. Can all these be safely deleted?



Any other general tips would be appreciated.

Cheers.

glib

Most engines prefer quads or tris at export/import, and just about everything will be tris in-game. The reason you were trying to stick to quads only doing high-poly stuff is because it works better with smoothing algorithms. Those high-poly models would still be triangulated at render time.

Generally when you're sticking to a stricter polycount, you're looking to make your geometry count for as much as possible. Therefore using a couple more polys to improve the silhouette is better than beveling an edge, which is better than geometry in the middle of a flat surface that is contributing nothing.

In your particular case, those edges don't help the silhouette, but they're also needed to stay away from n-gons (more than 4 sides). It's generally good practice to keep these in place, since some exporters will choke without them, and even if they don't these sorts of cuts will be made without your control, which could lead to stranger issues down the line.

Hayden Zammit

what about the question I had about the extra faces? The ones that I highlighted with yellow?

Zwebbie

If you mean the faces at the top and bottom of the shapes, then yes, those should be deleted - while they won't be rendered anyway, they still take up UV space and make your smoothing less accurate (if you'd be going for normal maps, that is).