Questions about proper modelling

a-k-m

Hello,

I read somewhere that modellers try to avoid having tris and n-gons in their models.

So I was modelling a furniture in my room and when I was almost finished I saw that I forgot completely to consider that.

Take a look at the image and the red signed areas:



Is it really bad to have tris in the model, or can you get away with one or another?

What about the n-gons. Do I have to avoid them at all costs?
How would you clear the n-gons in my shown example?

Thanks for help in advance!

dpaynter26

tris arent as bad as n-gons, you never want to have n-gons but game models are all tris when they go into the engine, so if it's a game model no big deal for tris at all but NO N-GONS! as far as models that arent meant for game engines a tri here or there isnt too bad but try to hide it in your edgeflow as best as possible, as far as your highlighted areas defintely connect your edgeloops and bring them around the model so you dont have n-gons

Wesley

I've seen loads of quality assets on Polycount that have a fuck tonne of tris.

I thought as long as it wasn't animated it really didn't matter about tris. If everything is converted to tris then why does a tri matter to begin with?

sub_roland

dpaynter pretty much nailed it. It depends on what your using it for. games, most engines will tri it for you. Sometime you have to hand tri your model because the engine will make some cuts in the wrong direction and can cause some funky looking normals. For film its all quads sense your poly count doesnt matter as much, and leads to better deformation. You can even have n-gons for some engines because again it will tri it for you on import, but it is best to avoid them.

passerby

for game res models all quads and tris, but for your high poly models it dosnt really matter, just remember that quads smooth and subdivided better than n-gons, so if your using n-gons in a subd model try to keep them on flat surfaces.

really when it comes to modeling there really isnt set rules, like never use tris, you got to make judgment calls and decide if your better off doing the extra work too keep it all quads and just use some tris here and there.

i will use tris, and for subd models i will use ngons , but i do try to stay mostly quads so i can use loop and ring selections, and speed up my modeling a bit.

a-k-m

alright, thanks guys, I will consider this in the future!

S_ource

I think that all polygon 3d are using triangels all the time but when in modeling packages its just not showing everything as triangels becours its easier to model that way, for exampel if you turn off smothing and if a square in the modeling package isent flat it will be shaded like 2 triangels becours its what it is. I applyed noise to a sphere to get it uneven.
Sphere one is shaded, sphere 2 is not, sphere 3 have wireframe of the polygons/triangels. So its always using triangels its just easier to model when it showd as squares and also easier for the package to subdivide it.

mdeforge

Protip: The sticky at the top of this thread about "modeling them shapes" is a great place to learn more about this.