Low Poly
 

Just a quick question. I notice that most, if not all of the low poly count models around here are done in tri's. Is this because tri's are better for 3d game engines or what? Or just more efficient?

Yeah most game engines use tri's although they are starting to use quads.... YIPPY

I was wondering this too blinn :D.. thanks for asking that. BTW, can anyone answer this too? How do you model something totally in tri's! With polygons i have no idea how to model all in tri's, how do you extrude and stuff and maintain tri's?

I usually don't extrude a lot of faces when I make low-poly models. If I extrude anything, I generally extrude edges. Plus you've got your handy Polygon menu with it's Triangulate and Quadrangulate commands.

Usually, I'll start with a cube or cylinder and cut into it with split poly or cut faces tool to get new geometry rather than extruding.

That's just me, though. For my next model, I'll see about doing a time lapse. :)

From a technical standpoint, all game engines end up reading faces as triangles. Doesn't matter if they are quads or not. You can use quads and n-sided faces, but the engine will break it down to triangles. The reason you see a lot of game models as tri's is because that is the only way the modeler can define how where the edges are and how they deform.

Take a quad for instance. A quad is actually 2 triangles. If the quad is deforming (on a character, for example), which way does the face bend? If left to the engine, you may not get desirable results. Now imagine that on a row of quads. You could get some really odd deformations. This is where converting the faces to tri's really helps. You can be very explicit about how a mesh deforms.

As far as modeling goes, you can treat the model like any other poly model. Just use whatever poly tools you want. You can always triangulate the mesh, merge vertices, collapse faces, etc at the end to create a tri-only mesh. It's all about control.

exactly as Dannygan said.. very well explained..