+4 edges on a face?

[Herpes Melodie]

Heya everyone,

I was wondering if it would hurt if my model contained faces with 4+ edges. As a general rule of thumb I learned that it is best to use faces with 4 edges, at all times. However, I oftend end up with +4 edges on a face after using the booleans tool in Maya.

Should I try to make a proper topology by using tools such as the split polygon tool and make every face with 4 edges, or could I get away with it?

 

 

[Rage Riptide]

Maaannn... it's all about edge loops. Avoid triangles at all costs. 5 sided poles are ok to direct edge loops. Get with the program man.. be square.

[Rage Riptide]

I try to be fuunny.. I just found this.

Edge loops

[Herpes Melodie]

I find you truly amazing for posting a link toward the manual. How come I didn't thought of that - silly me! Unfortunatly this is not what I was talking about, nor is it covered in the manual, or I am getting blind.

I know that squares are the way to go whenever possible. But I would like to know why - or better said 'when'  - my model will be in troubles when it contains faces with +4 edges. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

For example, if I want to bevel a few specifc edges and leave other edges for what they are, I might end up with tiny faces that contain +4 edges. Because I dont want to save and upload to check the mesh in SL every time I do something, I would rather know -when- I am doing something that will cause a problem and -when- I am doing something that wont lead to problems.

I hope this explains what I meant.

Also, though this is not a question related to what I described above, I was wondering what the easiest way is to to extract a door shape out of a square box,with an opening on both sides, in Maya. If I do it with the booleans tool (creating a door shape with a box, stick it into a wall, and hit Booleans difference) I end up with many edges on the wall and the normals are not corrent. And if I create a plane. add some resolution with edgeloops and cut out a doorshape with the split polygon tool, I have a plane with a nice doorshape. I figured I should extrude the plane to at least one time to give it faces on the sides. But when I upload it, I get the same result in SL.

Do enlighten  me, please.

 

 

 

[guY Ralior]

When modeling you want to stick to quads instead of n-gons. The main reason is an n-gon deforms unpredictably when it is in an area that is going to flex or be animated and when triangulated does not split as predictable either, also programs such as Zbrush will not import if you have n-gons.

So in Maya one of your easy ways to take care of this is either to just triangulate which is not the best way but does not require anything more than a click. Or you can use clean up mesh and have it show you your n-gons and manually fix them which is better but does take time. One thing I have found by cleaning up though is, it teaches you good topology so you have less problems in the beginning. But if your re-topoing after your sculpt layer topology isn't so important in the beginning anyway hope this helps with your problem

[guY Ralior]

This would be for how to make a wall hope it helps

 

-make a cube

-transform it into the wall shape you are looking for and add loops to it in attributes 

-delete faces you want to have be the opening

-use append to polygon tool to face the opening where you deleted the faces

[Herpes Melodie]

Guy,

Thank you you very much. I wasn't aware of all this, nor did I knew that programs such as Zbrush have problems with n-gons. This solved my the problem I had with Zbrush as well.

About the wall, I will give it a shot tomorrow, its 4:40 am here at the moment and the maya logo is burned into my eyes. It would appear to me that is is easy cake as how you desribe it, but one cannot be sure enough. If I bump against a problem, I will reply here.

Thanks again!

 

[guY Ralior]

Your most welcome good luck!