Keeping all-quads?

[wannabeArtist]

Hello,

Still working with Automotive Modeling kit, I have recently run into some issues with triangles.

I have heard a lot of the importance of avoiding triangles and yet some shapes are naturally triangular - so are there some "mathematical rules" how to get around these? Or best practices?

Here's a screen shot of the trunk area of my model in progress - I tried to avoid too many edges going up and over the narrow roof arc and rather tried to turn the to run across the trunk. Well, this produced a triangle at the blinker area. I "fixed" that with a few edges running up, but somehow the topology seems unsatisfactory :)

Any tips?

http://i40.tinypic.com/2z5nct4.jpg

[wannabeArtist]

I think I almost accidentally fixed this :) One edge is deleted and others reorganized slightly - any comments and ideas how to further improve this are greatly appreciated!

http://i42.tinypic.com/a1gtw6.jpg

[SlipAway]

I couldn't spot the triangle in your first image. The encircled is a quad and I've numbered the edges for you. Keep in mind that an edge might appear to be just one but if it is intersected by another edge that will split it. Because a polygon appears to be triangular in shape does not mean it can't be a quad.

Also, I'm reading in some places that triangulation is not as bad as it used to be with newer renderers. I can't confirm this, maybe DT can provide some input if this is accurate.

[wannabeArtist]

Hello and thanks for your reply!

Actually I wrote, that I "fixed" that, so you are right, there is no triangle :)
It was just the "fix" I was unsatisfied with, but then after some tweaking I ended up with whats in the last screen shots.

I guess the triangles and n-gons only get on the way if the object is to be deformed in animation. In my car model that will not be the case, but I try to keep it clean all-quads just for practice :)

I haven't heard about the new renderers being less picky, but this could be true - I must google it :)

Here's how it looks now (and the bend in one of the loops is for the tail light :)

http://i39.tinypic.com/5khm55.jpg

[SlipAway]

Did you "fix" it in your first or second post? I saw the edges you removed in the 2nd post but that also removed resolution that I'm assuming was to be used to build the light.

I'm not sure how the topology should flow around that back corner, but looking at your latest image it looks like one edge loop that doesn't flow around the corner like the rest of them. Is this the desired result or did this happen from removing that resolution in post 2?

[danlefeb]

I do a lot of hard surface modeling, and as such tris and n-gons don't really effect me that much. So I don't worry about avoiding them too much if going all-quads means a lot of extra time. But if you do some sort of rigging to animate your model, make sure it deforms the way you want. Usually this means some cleanup if you've got tris and n-gons.

[wannabeArtist]

Did you "fix" it in your first or second post? I saw the edges you removed in the 2nd post but that also removed resolution that I'm assuming was to be used to build the light.

Well, at least I thought I fixed it in the second post :) Somehow the lone row of edges visible in the first post didn't seem right, so I got rid of them and reorganized the flow a little bit. The area making up the tail light is highlighted here - or am I missing something? quite possibly! :D

It's far from perfect, of course, but I'm pretty satisfied with it now.
The only apparent problem that I can see right now with it, is the edge that should follow the seam of the trunk, but started a drift a little. This should be easy to fix though.


http://i40.tinypic.com/214xw01.jpg




I do a lot of hard surface modeling, and as such tris and n-gons don't really effect me that much. So I don't worry about avoiding them too much if going all-quads means a lot of extra time. But if you do some sort of rigging to animate your model, make sure it deforms the way you want. Usually this means some cleanup if you've got tris and n-gons.

Thanks for clearing that out. This is really just one of my first models, so I'm trying to keep it somewhat clean for sake of practice. This was also explained in the training kit, though - not so big deal to have n-gons is no deforming is done.

[danlefeb]

To me, non-quad geometry just looks messy...So I understand where you're coming from. My point mainly was that if you're in a time crunch and you know that non-quads will in no way affect your model, there's no point spending the time fixing that just for looks when you can spend that time tweaking someone else. A key part of this, though, is what sort of pipeline you work in. I work alone, so I have the benefit of knowing that no one else will be touching my models. But if you're pushing it down to someone else you may want to take the time to fix it so they don't run into issues on their end and send the model back for fixing anyway!

[wannabeArtist]

Right,

That makes sense. I'm currently not in the business quite yet, but that's the target, and probably - if I succeed in finding a job - I will be working with other people as part of a pipeline. Not that I would mind working on my own :)

[danlefeb]

There's pros and cons to working alone, as with anything I guess. :)