explain some things for me would ya?
 

hello i'm currently working on the free dog tutorial provided by simplymaya ....and during the tutorial...there are sections of the polygon model where there are extra edges....i'm wondering is there any harm to leaving unessesary edges in the model....is removing them purely for asthetics of the wireframe? or does it serve some purpose...


second question....while working on the polygon part there are times where there are three sided polygons.....just wondering if three sided polygons are bad versus four sided? again is it purely wireframe asthetics or does it serve a purpose such as smoother texture application?


sorry for being a noob...

thanks in advanced for any answers...

-steve

dont remove any edges that are required to define parts of the model..

if you do this your model will have some oddly shaded areas, but if the edge you are removing co-planar to other existing edges around it, then its fine...

generally you would want to remove unecessary lines, but it doesnt really matter much in the end, it just slightly racks up how many polys you have in your scene..

three sided polygons arent bad, generally you want to be consistent with whether your scene is contained with triangles or quadrilaterals, but again, it doesnt really matter...

Triangles are only a big deal if you are modeling for a game, because all polygons must be co-planar, and all triangals are co-planar, so you wont get errors, but otherwise its fine...

thanks for answer my questions cat, but i have one more quesion for you.... what does co planar mean?

it means that, all the vertices of a polygon can form a plane, meaning they can form a flat figure..