A simple question I'm sure...

#1

So I have a question that I’m sure is absolutely ridiculous as I’ve been using Maya for a bit now and have never come across this answer nor ever sought the answer.

When modeling characters for animation, I understand that the character must be all quads or all tris. If there are any faces with extra edges, it will cause issues with animation.

Does this apply to modeling objects that will not be animated? I see a lot of people model objects and use booleans or others tools that cause a face to have a ton of vertices and edges thus completely ignoring keeping faces tris or quads. When I model objects, I don’t pay attention to how many edges on a poly…because I usually don’t animate anything.

Is this ok? Is it okay for a face to have a bunch of edges/vertices if the object is not going to be animated?

Thanks for the answer…I know you’re rolling your eyes :rolleyes: :smiley:

#2

It’s actually really not a simple question, or at least not a simple answer. One school of thought is that as long as there aren’t any visible problems when rendered, weird topology is fine. However, in larger pipelines this can lead to problems. Unusual topology can be harder to UV, or render artifacts might show up when lighting that the modeler didn’t anticipate.

As a practical matter for someone working on their own, it’s fine if some of your assets have non-standard topology, but if you want to get hired, you should be able to show that you can model with clean topology when you need to.

#3

It’s my understanding that Tri’s are sometimes awkward for animation, but are fine on non-stretching areas, or at least I keep seeing that in tutorials. For the most part, they say to stick with quads as much as possible for animation.

Perhaps some of what you’re seeing are on models that aren’t optimized for animation?

#4

Edit: oops.

#5

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