This is something I've searched many times over the course of a year, but could not find an answer to, let alone a mention of in this use case. When you have one of these, it creates an intersecting loop. In Maya, it creates an error where if you insert a loop, it does not proceed to complete the other half on one side of…
Why? it's not what I asked, and I can only see the down side to that. It would be nothing special, it wouldn't curve around muscles which can make some areas look blocky unless it's overly dense, and should be fine so long as joints aren't effected. it's just a terrible approach for different levels of muscle deformation…
Sorry for the very late reply, and thanks for the responses! This is pretty much what I've got concerning self-intersecting loops and re-did almost everything from the knees down. So that's five self-intersecting loops from the waist down, although I don't really think there will be any issues now. All poles were necessary…
In very specific cases where it is the only option that makes sense sure, that's fine. If you use it all over the place its going to drive you and other people who work with the model, bonkers. Modelers without a lot of skinning or material experience tend to focus on wonky things that cause issues for other people later…