@kanga - what do you mean by "box modeling"? I'm learning what I think is termed "subdivision modeling" right now (with control loops and turbosmooth, and also smoothing groups). I haven't been able to find anything about why we would use this method, and what the alternative methods are.
Yeah I think that people who started out box modelling have the advantage because loop placement was/is everything. Also lack of instruction means that the very basics of poly modelling get glossed over some how. Student will download free collapsed models and whack them into their scenes. When you see the wireframes they…
Using quads has a lot of modeling benefits since they make a lot of operations faster such as selecting loops and rings of edges/verts. It's also much easier to make sense of what is going on in your mesh if the topology is quads, it's frequently more difficult to make sense of a triangulated mesh (especially for things…
Sub-D modeling and box modeling are kinda the same boat. Just one is smoothed (turbosmooth/smooth preview with control loops) and one is not. Starting with a cube and building your mesh out from it along with edge extrusion (The way I learned) used to be the standard way to make characters before zbrush became the heavy…
Question 1 seems to have been covered pretty well already so I'll leave this one out. 2. In general, I would get into the mindset of adding geometry only where it is needed. Just because the new systems can handle more doesn't mean that efficient modelling is no longer required. It still all counts, whether in rendering or…