Warlock279 posted at 6:05PM Mon, 11 January 2021 - #4409947

LuxXeon posted at 3:22PM Mon, 11 January 2021 - #4409772 . . . and using the ngons allowed me to create a lot more detail with minimal polygon count. Each model is less than 100 polygons. It would have been impossible to do using quads.

Eh, maybe? But probably not really. While the "forward facing" poly count might seem lower, the model is almost certainly converted to triangles at render time [I don't know of any render engine that doesn't], and the software itself is still dealing with the same number of vertices, so I'd be dubious of any performance benefit there as well. If anything there might be a small negative impact, as its possible the software is constantly calculating those ngons as tho they were triangles? Obviously, in the case of objects with only 100 polygons, you'd never notice a difference performance wise, but I wonder, if you stacked a significant amount of geometry up, quads/tris in one mesh, and ngons in another with an equal amount of vertices, if you might not see more favorable performance from the quads/tris mesh? Can't deny that the ngons will be likely be more pleasing to the eye while working than a mesh that's triangulated every which way, but I think claiming a "low polycount" on account of ngons is a bit of a trap.

Not saying, "don't use ngons" cause you know what you're doing, just quibbling over how you justify them. ;)

Allow me to clarify my position, Warlock279, since I am probably the last person who would justify ngons in 99.9% of modeling workflows. As I mentioned, I currently have over 200+ production models for sale (in other marketplaces), and this will be my first product where ngons were introduced as part of the final model. I usually avoid the rare use of a triangle in my models unless it's used to terminate edge flow, or unless the mathematics of the topology makes it impossible to quadrify without subdivision.

In this particular case, however, the use of ngons in the workflow was almost essential to the look and feel of the final result. Not only did ngons allow me to produce more variety of unique objects in a more efficient way, using ngons actually helped to achieve the final look that I was going for in this package, because it reduced the number of visible edges in the wireframe for each model, and gave me more control over the profile. Here's an example of what I mean...

Had these models been created with standard box modeling techniques, there would have been many more visible edges in the profile of each object. Since these models depend on the wireframe for the final look, it would have required laborious texture painting to get this type of result. Instead, I was able to achieve the result I wanted in a fraction of the time using boolean cutouts and the wireframe modifier for each object. In any other situation, I would have avoided not only ngons, but the use of booleans in general.

You are correct. Behind the scenes, triangles are always being processed by the software for every geometric surface. Not only in the rendering process, but also in the background of the viewport code. As you are well aware, every quad is made up geometrically of two triangles, but the software simply hides the edge between them in the viewport to the user for editing convenience and a more tidy appearance. Evidence of this is quite easy to find. If you take any "quad" model and apply a wireframe node to its shader in the Shader editor, you'll end up with triangles (I wish Blender Foundation would allow you to use the wireframe texture to show quad topology, but that's a discussion for another day). Same thing with ngons, except there are more than just two triangles obviously. So using ngons will definitely add to the processing requirements of an object, but in a timeframe measured only in milliseconds. Texture maps and procedural shaders can take up a significantly more substantial effort of CPU and GPU processing power and system requirements in game engines or real time render engines. In this case, there are no texture maps, although I did unwrap each model with non-overlapping UVs.

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