tri's vs. quads (presentation wise)

MikeF

So i know this is pretty subjective and also depends on the work (i.e current gen vs. handheld), but out of curiosity what do most people consider the favorable method of presenting finished work in a portfolio, fully triangulated and game ready or quads?

as i see it here are the pros cons'

quads:
pros: shows how good your geo flow is when working
much easier to read and find problems or mistakes
looks nicer in a beauty shot

cons: not 100% indicative of the final product when taking into account how the final output engine will interpret the smoothing & triangulation (if done automatically)

tris:
pros: shows that the artist has a sound understanding of how game engines render the final product
shows that the artist understands the limitations of realtime engines and how to adapt from the very start and not after the fact

cons:looks messy for presentation
hard to see how the artist went about constructing the asset


I guess in the end you could just throw both in there, but for the sake of keeping a clean simple portfolio i'd like to hear your opinions, thanks guys!


also, keep in mind i'm going off the school of thought that your final product should be shown in a realtime engine if you're after a job in games

pior

Just show us what you are trying to showcase, and we'll discuss from there. Like most big questions like that, it is pretty much a pointless discussion if not applied to an asset in particular. Don't overthink it in advance, just do it, and decide what looks best.

Brendan

If you show an in-game render, then obviously it's triangulated and is how the final output engine interprets the smoothing.

Which, to me, addresses the cons for displaying it as quads. If it looks good as a beauty shot in-engine, and as a quad mesh in (whatever), then it should look good as tris in (whatever).


Maybe you could have a third image, which is the model, triangulated, with only normal and AO maps applied? Maybe spec/gloss if you need it to get a read on materials. No diffuse, no coloured spec, etc. No colour, apart from tinted lights and a gradient background.

malcolm

As a rule of thumb I would always do quads except where you need to define a triangle edge to control the shape of your model. I don't like looking at triangulated models, presentation wise it looks very dated and messy.

Stromberg90

I do mine in triangles, mostly because I render them out from toolbag.
Other than that I really don't mind how someone does it, as long as you can tell whats going on.

pasha_sevez

I think every professional can easily "read" the triangulated model. More over the model made of triangles initially (like geo poly) can have much better forms approximation rather than quad model with the same polycount. It's all about realtime game models. Sculpts and subds need have quadded topology for sure - it is all a matter of technology.

Mark Dygert

I think quads look better than tris. I'm not necessarily sure you need to show every last hidden edge just to demonstrate that you know all games run on tris. I think its more important to demonstrate that you know what loops and rings are and that you're not going to screw over the guy doing the skinning by delivering a triangulated nightmare. Honestly it's his job to export the model as tris and police the tri-stripping, you just make pretty meshes...

In some cases it might be better to view it as tris, some things like rocks, terrain or other organic things like a statue or a tarp draped over boxes. Stuff that won't deform, would probably better optimized if made of tris instead of quads.