3 and n-side poly question
I am a newb modeler and I was wondering about 3 side and n-side poly's.
I am having a hard time keeping my models light and one of the major causes is trying to keep everything to quads.
Very often on a long model to convert one 3-sided poly to a quad I have to split 50+ polygons just to add one edge to a tri!
When I start trying to add muscle details on an organic model I very quickly end up with a completely unmanagable number of edges and start getting unwanted bunching of contour lines.
Since most final renders are done on a smoothed poly surface and smoothing has the added benifit of converting all the n-polys and tri's to quads is it better to keep the model lite and allow a couple n-side and tri's in the mesh?
PS - I don't see why the Maya developers can't add a function to automatically quadrangulate a mesh without adding super heavy geometry?