Modeling (sides of poly's)

[Per-Anders]

Four sided polygons deform better and result in less odd weighting and pinching of subdivision surfaces than tri's and >4 sides. If you're not modeling something that needs to be deformed or animated and deformed in animatino (by bones for instance) then you don't have to abide by that rule. In general quads allow you to create nice clean mesh topology which is easy to reshape though.

[DarkFlite]

I'm not sure of the reasons, but if you use Hypernurbs you need to stick to Quad-Gons, or the results are a mess.
I think I remember reading that the render engine can compute quads faster too.

Which is a shame, since Tri-gons always map correctly to a plane. No matter how you twist or move a tri it'll always be flat. Can't say that about Quads or nGons - four or more points and the poly might not lie flat to a plane.

[konomos]

nGons are polys with more than 4 sides, right? So if we are trying to stay away from tri's, do we need to stay away from nGons as well?

[Tryn]

it depends entirely on what you're doing, but in general, quads are better than tris, which are better than ngons. Hypernurbs dont seem to have too much trouble with the odd tri in my experience.
My policy is to stick with quads if I can, and a tri if I have to have one. As Per-anders said, quads create clean topology, something that helps immeasurably if you have to change a mesh, and means it deforms without wierd pinching. I'll only ever use Ngons when its a completely flat surface (wall with door and window cavities, say).

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