What rules should I follow when creating object?

#1

I am fairly new to CG. I use Maya 3d and my question is: What rules should i folllow when I am modelling so my object would be of high structural quality? For example, i heard that Boleans should be avoided at all costs…

#2

The only reason to avoid booleans is because it can, and often does, result in horrible mesh topology, which is very time consuming to clean up in many cases. However, if you are confident with cleaning up a messy mesh, then you can use them sparingly, and simply fix the errors they cause (double edges, isolated verts, ngons, and long unsupported edges and artifacts). I never use booleans, because almost everything you can create with booleans can be modeled without them, logically, and with good edge flow.

Honestly, many people have now abandoned logical modeling in favor of sculpting and retopology, where edge loops and edge flow can be defined later in the process. Whichever route of modeling you decide to take, the rule of thumb for models which will be passed down a animation or texturing pipeline, or redistributed as resources to other artists, is to model in quads with logical edge loop flow, and attention to poly count. There are rare cases where a triangle or two can not be avoided, and this is fine, so long as they don’t appear in areas where the mesh might deform in animation, or cause problems with the topology.

I would avoid Ngons entirely. I don’t see any good reason to use them, unless you are modeling for game engines, where details will be baked into a very low poly mesh. If the models you are building are for high resolution film, architectural visualization, or animation, then keep your topology quads with some intelligent placement of triangles, and you should be ok. For game modeling, you can get away with ngons on perfectly flat surfaces, but that’s the only time I’d recommend allowing them into your workflow. There’s very good advice on topology in these forums, and excellent tutelage on Youtube or other free resources.