How Bad are Triangles and N-Gons, Really?

[mynameisnick24]

Hi All,

This might be a really dumb, beginner question, but I'm still in school so I feel I'm still allowed to ask dumb questions.

How Bad is it to leave Triangles and n-Gons in Geometry? I know that they are bad in terms of smoothing and I know everything is actually converted into triangles when it is rendered so leaving an odd number can cause things to look a bit off. But does it affect things so greatly that you should take the time to remove every single one?

Also, have their been instances where it is okay to leave these types of geometry in models?

[Firebert]

it all really depends on what you are doing.

SubD & Animation: Absolutely no N-Gons. As few triangles as possible, and if any, in a non deformable location that will not be viewed heavily, and as long as it doesn't create any pinching that is drastically OMG or can't be corrected with smoothing groups. General rule, stick to Quads and imo, stay away from creasing edges.

Sculpting: No N-Gons, no triangles. If you do have any tris, it better be in a place where there is no sculpting at all. And if you're using ZBrush as your sculpting app, you better not be using tpose master as triangles can explode once you convert the tpose mesh. Holy rule, stick to Quads.


Games: Triangles are your friend in a lot of cases. This also depends on the workflow of the modeler here. Some guys like to model their final mesh in triangles, others stick to quads and tris. N-gons are not as bad, but can be problematic, so it's just a good rule of thumb to stick away from them at all costs.... and guess what, you can manually triangulate those ngons almost worry free if you have proper smoothing groups. General rule, stick to Quads and Tris.

[mynameisnick24]

Thanks very much for the detailed, scenario based explanation Firbert. I greatly appreciate it.