Depending on the size of the mesh in the game and how you're engine compresses the mesh (16 bit vs 32 bit mesh precision) i would say open edges are _definately_ prone to causing visible seams in most engines that are optimized for low memory consumption of geometry on memory limited platforms.
No open edges, I just split the back face of the mesh cause I wanted to bevel out that rectangle for detail and didn't want to have to fidget with lining up a separate piece. With all the talk about how quads are so important, it can leave one thinking that tris are a bad thing. Ultimately the reason I don't want to…
What you're calling an "open edge", we call in my office a "T-Junction". Open edges (corners that aren't welded) are fine, so long as the edges all come back to vertices that have the same location. T-Junctions (a corner on one side of a face, that rests in the middle of another face) IS bad, however. The main reason for…
@ TorQue The whole "everything must be quads" thing has been discussed on polycount a few times before. For highpoly stuff it's often a good thing to keep stuff quads, especially if you wanna take it into zbrush or mudbox. And for characters you wanna make sure that the areas that will deform a lot has proper edgeloop and…