An Angle Puzzle?

Playdo

Someone asked this question a while back on the 'how u model dem shapes' thread but it never got answered, so I'm asking it again.

What's the best way to tackle edge flow when approaching an angle like this? As you can see, I've produced triangles. Is there a way to keep this neatly to quads?

SyncViewS

Hi, if you're a quad addicted, give this a try. A couple of relax on inner added verts and you're good to go.

DarthNater

I never understood the point of creating a quad that looks identical to a triangle? What's the reasoning behind that? I realize it's to keep all quads, but why? (I know why you want to keep quads, but I think you see what I'm asking).

SyncViewS

On a flat surface, if not along a sensible edge, tris, quads, ngons, don't make any difference, In this case too, since edge is already "reinforced" by an edge loop. The only difference is in your eye, if you like to look at your model and say: "hey, look at that, it's all quads!".

I made a paint over, so didn't relax the vertexes as stated. In that case you wouldn't see triangular quads, because every vertex would reach its fitting position.

Anyway the real deal with quads is on curved surfaces, where tris tend to give small bulges, and ngons tend to go flat. Having all quads is not a must, even in this case. Well placed tris and ngons could give very good results in a small amount of time, rather than bashing you head against the wall to keep everything in quad.

At least this is my opinion.

Playdo

Quad Addict . I haven't looked at the smoothness of the corner so much, just at the smoothed wireframe which didn't look 'right' to me, so I presumed it may cause slight pinching.

So if you are saying that placing tris all along the edge like this is a good way to do it, that's fine with me, I just wasn't sure if it was as I haven't seen many examples. I like to keep edge flow, grid-like, when possible, as it makes alterations easier for me.

SyncViewS

Well, looking at the smoothed solution, it does have some pinching. It's up to the accuracy degree you want to achieve to change the topology to make it more regular. The sample I gave should provide better results and is quite fast to get, remember to relax the added vertexes after the whole cutting thing. I almost always stick to the principle: if looks good, is good.

Zwebbie

Playdo wrote: »

I haven't looked at the smoothness of the corner so much, just at the smoothed wireframe which didn't look 'right' to me, so I presumed it may cause slight pinching.

All you have to do to test if this works or not is look at it in plain smooth view. If it doesn't look ugly, there's no problem.
(from what I tested, it doesn't pinch, or not noticably)

commander_keen

Some renderers dont support triangles or ngons, such as Renderman because it converts the polys to nurbs patches i think. Mental Ray for Maya also doesnt support ngons afaik.

Playdo

Like this, with iteration set to 2:

divi

add another all-quads loop "behind" that one and you won't have any errors in the smoothing. no matter if it's tris or ngons or anything.

Cyrael

extremely useful thanks for asking the question.

SyncViewS

Yep Playdo, that's what I meant. You can relax those verts until they don't move anymore, it won't make any relevant difference in the smoothed version, but the wires would look even nicer

Playdo

divi wrote: »

add another all-quads loop "behind" that one and you won't have any errors in the smoothing. no matter if it's tris or ngons or anything.

I don't get where you mean? Can you illustrate it?

MoP

commander_keen wrote: »

Mental Ray for Maya also doesnt support ngons afaik.

This is 100% wrong.

Playdo: What divi was talking about is essentially what you did a couple of posts up.

divi

Playdo

Ok, thanks for the help on this. Ps. nice high poly sniper modeling Sync.

Playdo

Hello again. Here's the original image by Jocose. Here the surface is curved, so I guess that triangles along the edge is out of the question? Would it be best to approach this like Sync showed in the other example, I'd have thought it's be hard to keep a continuous curve? If anyone's up for showing it modeled correctly, that'd be good to see.

MoP

Again this is a case where you'd want that extra supporting edge loop to prevent the sides from pinching around the hole there. It's pretty much the same situation as divi described above.
In this case the simplest way would be to simply extrude that whole face loop inwards by a little bit.

Playdo

Hi Mop, It doesn't look like there's one supporting edge there in the first place, so I presume you mean two. I'm not sure if you're saying it's ok to place triangles along that edge, as I thought they shouldn't be placed on a curved surface?

Jacose's approach is messy - I'm just focusing on the best way to tackle edge flow approaching angled extrusions.