Why ngons are BETTER than quads for hard surface
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- In this video, I'll present both the ngon and quad workflow by designing one mesh with booleans and ngons, and another identical mesh using quads and subdivision surface.
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Josh when I first started watching him: "Ngons are Terrible! Only keep them when you absolutely have to!"
Josh Now: "NGons are the greatest"
We were all brainwashed at one point LOL
I can relate to this xD
@@JoshGambrell na ngons are still shitty for every pro
@@PrefoX point me to a pro that only models in quads please.
Even the guns in modern video games does not, characters are the only exception, and thats only around animated areas.
@@JoshGambrell I am learning Blender, coming from Solidworks and going through the Blender Guru tutorials you are talking about like the chair one.
I am trying to replicate all the furniture products I've done throughout the years in SW to Blender so I can do photorealistic models (contemporary products, some with upholstery as well), and then sell them on something like CG trader so I can earn some passive income with products that I had already done in 3D.
For this purpose, my main question as a noob is - is this a viable way to make the 3Ds assets that I want to sell or will I have problems with clients in the future because of "bad topology" and what not? Thank you in advance ;)
"Once you understand the rules
, you can bend them very easily"
Totally agree. Great video.
Friendship broken with quads. Now Ngons is my best friend.
Same here. I learned only last week: quads for stretchable, malleabe models like character, and n-gons for hard-surfaced models only if you want shapes fixed and unchanged.
Before last week, I used to do quads on all hard-surfaces and avoid n-gons for wrong reasons. Now I welcome n-gons for hard-surfaced models.
Oh!! Than You for clarifying this mystery and misunderstanding about ngons.
Now put both of them up for sale or even free in a non-Blender only market with labeling indicating "all quads" or ""has ngons." Which one will get more downloads? As a side note: retopo on an ngon object to make it quads will take longer to create the whole asset than just doing it with quads from step one.
I haven't got any problems with ngons in general (horses for courses, right?) but I think you're maybe giving the quad modelling a little bit of a short shrift. Yes, for this shape, ngons are going to be a little easier to handle. But for something with curvier shapes, quad topo is going to give you smoother output-- you're not cutting holes in spheres with a bunch of ngons. What you're doing with that bevel modifier on the ngon mesh is creating your control loops, and you can use a bevel modifier on the quad topo to create them if you want, rather than doing it destructively like you're doing (the ngon mesh has the advantage that you don't have to use bevel weight, because you're basically telling it what edges to bevel based on the ngon you make; you do have to be careful about bevelling to prevent the creation of poles if you want to subdiv afterwards.) Or, you could edge crease instead, and skip making all those control loops, and then you're going to find it much easier to do future editing. With what you start with, though, creases aren't going to be great, for the same reason that you notice pinching: you're not paying any attention to non-planar 3 and 5 poles in the quad mesh, which kinda defeats the purpose of the quad topo anyways. After you fix those poles, creasing will be just fine as a way to control the sharpness of the edge.
We made a video on organics with bools/ngons already. Check this out: th-cam.com/video/sViHcoMOHWs/w-d-xo.html
@@JoshGambrell Did you link the right tutorial? He has 1 ngon through most of it, then eventually 3 adjacent ngons, describing a flat section rather than a curved section, and it creates pinching (even with the forgiving preview-- use a matcap to see better.) Eventually, he applies the subsurf to use more ngons-- and yes, any topo problem can be solved by throwing enough verts at it, but the issue is the same as you complain about here with your quad mesh: you create something that is a giant pain to work with.
Yeah I have an object with many curves subtle pieces and the Ngons might just work and have no visible issues or really visible, kinda randomly (subtle curves).
Thanks for making this one Josh. This answered so many questions I have been having recently about this subject. Thanks again for the great content.
Thanks, happy to help
I find it interesting that subsurf workflow is defined as completely separate from boolean workflow. I've always used a subsurf first, either set to simple or catmull with supporting loops, then added bool and bevel modifiers after to remove hard edges where the cutting happens. The booleans interpolate better when intersected with subsurf loops, I've found.
wouldn't booleans work the same? just faces are smaller so shading artifacts are less noticable
@@carlomdlf The same as what? Just cutting straight into ngons or large quads? Not necessarily. I've seen awful shading explode over the surface when bools just triangulate a large quad as best they can. Adding support loops seems to correct it. Or force the surrounding faces back into a flatly shaded ngon, at least.
Very helpful Josh! Great for people starting out and for continued best practice!
Depends on the intention. What defines "better" is it's functionality in the given environment. If you hand an animator something made of ngons, on a feature, your looking for a new job, and that's even if your lead allows it to get that far lol What's better is that you have an understanding of both. There is no better just an understanding of when and where to use either or.
Great vid, thanks. Being a noob, I’m still struggling with a lot of this. So, if I’m doing archviz and I have a large flat wall with endless loop cuts to create windows and doors, should I go to the trouble of dissolving the unnecessary edges? Doing so reduces the poly count but results in lots of ngons. It’s a slightly different question than which technique I should use to create the openings in the first place, which is addressed in the video.
Well, I'm sold! I was never great at topology in subsurf but for my purposes super clean quad meshes aren't necessary anyway.
8:55 cheers for that nifty trick haha, I've been doing that a clunky way for sooooo long :D
Quad workflow is super important for VFX though right? Things need to animate well, subdivide well, be sculptable, Transformable, etc.
Just out of pure curiosity, why use proximity loops to sharpen up the subsurface mesh? Why not something like: Edge select > Select sharp edges > 30 degrees ish > bevel weight 100 > bevel modifier by weight with a profile of 90?
You can do either or.
Really good video. Thanks a lot!
"I don't want you to model with me, I want you to watch me"
He's onto me
Is there an issue while texturing and UV unwrap.
Thanks
Being a game developer I always say - if it looks righ and animates right - it is right :-). And if you can edit it easier / faster - go for it. I had to "unlearn" this all-quads approach some time ago, and now I use whatever gives me the results faster.
Spot on!
::knock on the door::
Hello?
Hi! I'm Josh! Have you heard about our Lord and Saviour, NGons?
Missing the point entirely. Hard surface is not all even boxes, booleans, and bevels. You cannot make a proper smooth, curved surface with those tools, or boxcutter, such as the frame of a car or a piece of armor. Those are the hard surface parts that are actually difficult to make and which require subsurf modeling to achieve. Not even mentioning cleaning these up - something you would be forced to throw into zbrush to actually make it workable. This workflow is fast, but very limiting.
It's ok for non deformable objects. But if they do, a good topoloogy is required.
shift + E
you dont need to put as many loop cuts
also i see it might be usefull with some game assets but as i mainly focus on automotive design subtractive modeling is not possible for me
i need to menage quads in a way to follow lines of the design
i cant just cut off parts of the cube
i would love to work liek with clay sculpting to model but it doesnt work that way
~4:15, you say the most important thing is to understand topology. There are a few facets to topology that I can think of. Could you be more specific? What about understanding topology are you referring to?
Hello everyone, awesome Tutorial... I work quite a lot with Blender and also have a German language channel. So far I work almost completely without addons. Unfortunately, I am now slowly reaching my limits. It takes too much time, and would now like to invest in one or two addons. Meshmaschine looks promising, but so does Fluent. Do I need the box cutter in addition?
Which addon is easier to use or rather where are there more tutorials? Thanks a lot for your help.
We use Hard Ops and Boxcutter. We have nothing against Fluent, I'm sure the creator is great, but we are loyal supporters of Hard Ops and Boxcutter and find this to be a very intuitive workflow for us.
What kind of gpu and hardware are you using? 16mb ram, i9 processor?
AMD 3950x, 16 core, 32gb ram, RTX 2070 SUPER
Model high res with all the booleans you want and then switch to proper quads for low res mesh is how I've approached things.
Could you show me the lowres mesh workflow?
Hmmm nice...
I've also been brainwashed heck, at least now I know the game engine I use doesn't care much about ngons since everything is triangulated at some point
Will this be OK with Unity?
Gollee! Pliers sure are better than a crescent wrench! They're different tools for different jobs. I'm 70% of the way through this video and I don't understand the point of it.
The key people need to understand is that quads are only essential with meshes you're going to deform. I'd avoid ngons on a character, but for hard surface it's a non-issue
@reezlaw: Nice clarification. Is that a hard rule or would there be exceptions where ngons doesn’t pose a problem when deforming things? (Disclaimer: I’m asking as a relatively newcomer to Blender and 3D.)
@@mixchief what happens when deforming ngons is that you might have some visual weirdness, but if it's somewhere you don't really notice for whatever reason then who cares?
@@mixchief if you want any deformation with predictable results you should use quads and triangulate any ngon
@@seemysight I remember, 2005, when I learned Maya, everything was triangulated. Even during the modeling process itself. I don’t think quad modeling had become de facto back then. :)
Does it not effect texturing?
This was a question I had.. Why do quads matter if you're not bending it? .... they don't.
Ngons can have issues with auto LODs in game engines. If you are using the asset in games without LODs, or making the load yoursel, it should be fine.
I'd be interested in seeing you retopologize one of these Ngon workflow models.
I think the point is: they don't need retopo. Unreal will deal with flat surfaces and split them perfectly into tris.
Check Josh's old videos. He's doing lots of Boolean cleanup.
The only reason to retopo is to sudivide for detail shots in keyshot.
I also still prefer quad process, but I also boolean and ngon and then just use the weld modifier, knife tool and few loops to get clean.
The reason is, that I model for visualisation like Tim Zarki and I always sudivide into oblivion for high quality detail renderings.
I'm a designer by craft and at work I use alias automotive. I only blender for fun in the evening.
@@teahousereloaded hopefully the other game engines catch up to Unreal in that respect. The reason being is, Unreal's design philosophy is that you're carving out space in a finite environment. Meaning, you'll never see a true giant sandbox in Unreal.
But in general, I am new to modeling.
@@Orphanlast all the other engines are equal with unreal on that respect. the real issues come with any deformations, UVs, and LODs.
Those would be good issues that maybe Josh or someone else detailed a bit more in-depth, with practical examples, as that appears to be a potential hurdle, still, in the ngon-workflow. (I’m still new to things 3D so this confuses me.)
@@mixchief Sadly this is a quite comprehensive topic. I suggest to learn quad modelling that you look at the older tutorials from this channel. Also the "chair tutorial" from blender guru (Andrew price) is a gem as it explains quite clearly how to redirect edgeflow.
You don't have to model in quads, but it's necessary to understand how to so you don't get confused if you run into problems.
You make valid points in this video but the starting shape that you then recreate with quads ( or try to) is really bias towards your workflow. I could start the other way around from a curvy sub D shape, something like Arrimus 3d would do in an obscure looking 10 years old max, try and recreate it with bool operations today and arrive to the conclusion that quads are still the BETTER way, and produce more visually interesting, full of life, hard surface, futuristic sci fi results. I understand that this workflow is more fun, refreshing and efficient but like everything else if you rely too much on it like you are doing, it ends up affecting design decisions heavily. You may not admit it but it shows, if you take a step back from your work, or glance at your video thumbnails. Don't get me wrong, that is not necessarily a bad thing if you are happy with the result, I am just saying that it has a clear impact that must be considered when picking the right tool for the job.
Yes definetly. Those people who throw shit at quads are assuming that a 3d artist needs to model only rounded boxes and cylinders with some rounded boxes and cylinders cuts here and there.
And of course quads "are only for VFX and characters". According to them, there's nothing existing in between a zbrush character and a cube with a couple of cool random cuts.
I'm not a vfx artist or a character guy, but I use quads every freakin' day to build furniture , architectural details and such... mostly for archviz, product visualization and VR.
N-gons are just bad in 90% of cases.
Of course if you only do this kind of boxy stuff and don't need proper Uv mapping, LODs or game engine work, you can get away with ngons.
First, I would like to say that creating the hard surface with boolean workflow instead of the classic quad box modelling, it's faster allows more iterations and changes during development and art direction and I encourage everyone to implement in your workflow. But the final deliverable should always be in quads. That means you should manual/automatic and fix your hard surface. That's what the VFX industry requires at least at the top-level studios. All hard surface models are subdivided at final renders and usually change different software too. Like take your model in Houdini for simulations or rigged in Maya, painted in Mari /SubstancePainter/3d coat etc. My advice as a 3d art director to modellers should be to always learn to have a clean topology as a deliverable. Having a boolean can help for concept designs, build something quick etc but the final should be cleaned up.
VFX is a completely different area, so yes, quads are a must. I disagree about the final deliverable model being in quads. If it is a static hard surface game asset with proper triangulation then it is a waste of time. I have delivered game ready models using ngons by simply triangulating them properly. The software will never know whether you modeled in ngons/quads because everything will be triangles. Houdini is for simulations, and rigging requires careful topology as well. Neither of these are purely hard surface. I am talking specifically about hard surface models only without the exceptions of BFX/organics, where it obviously won’t work
@@JoshGambrell yup i will agree on that for game models if you properly controlled triangulate them, so those area's won't screw over in the engine. it's a really good to go and big time saver for unrequited topology.
It seems then booleans is for sketching in 3D. It seems about right 👍🏽
@@JoshGambrell you delivered "game ready models using n-gons"? This is a bad habit the finished model should be quads and triangles. This is to avoid guesswork when game engines triangulate models.
@@codewarrior145 he said he triangulated them before they were delivered...
I agree with him. Back when I started learning 3d 12 years ago, using quadrilateral workflow was a necessity and there weren't any tutorials to teach or preach otherwise. If something saves your time in 3D, learn it with all your might; I had to figure this out the hard way trying to Sub-D my way through abominations that looked nothing like the reference I was modelling them on until I decided to actually actively study edgeflow.
Understanding Box modelling, curves modelling, Nurbs or even metaball modelling are valuable as a skill, but one should always remember that they are core skills that are to be learnt gradually and not be held as something of a dogmatic practice that is mocked or memed to moon.
If you enjoy Boolean workflow, take your time with it while still making steady progress in traditional modelling techniques, the plethora of information on them and their absolute dominance in certain industry makes them a distant yet important goal. I find this channel a breathe of fresh air for hard surface enthusiasts and wish we as a community (*cough blender cult *cough) should embrace the prospect of ingenuity in application rather than mindless debate and discussion on what reigns supreme.
9:01 instead of extruding and filling , enable f2 addon and when selecting the vertex on the corner and press f will fill it with the next 2 vertex
or press 4, when machin3 tools is enabled.
I was always taught that anything other than quads was taboo in any situation. Thank you so much for this.
Quads are required in many professional industries like film, game industries. I worked for a outsourcing company in game industry and I know that. Back in 2015 or 2016(too long ago can't remember), I did some props for some games. Their requirements were that you must submit both high poly and low poly, for each low poly, the triangle count was limited to 3k with +/- 5 as tolerance(not as low count as possible). For high poly, you need all quads and on top of that, they required good topology flow since they wanted to do some tweaks later in their own studio, so keep good topology flow is what they truly want. Also, most of the time, design phase has done before modeling department comes in, it is done in 2d and by concept art department. If modeling people want to change something or improve the design, they must communicate with lead, or supervisor and manager. In large projects, people normally don't do that. So maintaining a good topology flow is a required skill in those industries. As for quads, if your topo is good, you can make things all quads very easily.
Here's the problem with this video, you've made your title sound like ngons are universally better, which, they aren't.
If you are doing concept art, and I suppose games, then sure, modelling this way is fine, BUT, if you are trying to make higher quality assets that include things like displacement, you need to be able to subdivide the model properly, and by extension, the UV's need to hold properly without stretching when you subdivide, both of which will often have problems with ngons. There are exceptions and quads are not always necessary, but you didn't go over any of those issues in this video.
You also did not really model the second piece very well. I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm just being honest. I realize you were trying to do it quickly, but the main issue is that you made loops everywhere instead of doing manual bevels. Subdivision modelling IS tricky and it does require some forethought, and often having to go back and remodel stuff. There's no doubt it takes much more time, but, and I suppose this is arguable, you'll get the best results with proper subdivision modelling. Now, you did use booleans in your subD model, but you made it sound like that was a big taboo. It isn't. You use a boolean when the shape is tricky and will be easier to achieve with the boolean, then you clean it up, and you add bevels etc as needed. What people SHOULD be doing is beveling the edges and terminating the edge loops when they are no longer needed, so that A) you can avoid unwanted hard edges somewhere else on the model, and b) to reduce the overall topology.
People should be doing subdivision modelling when they NEED TO SUBDIVIDE at render time. That's the point of it. If render time subdivision isn't needed, then I agree, it's not really necessary to do, but in many cases, if done well, it will often give you the best looking results.
That's my two cents - but hey, I'm just some asshole on the internet. Model however you want to, especially if it's for personal work. I'm also not disparaging this workflow, it's very fast and very iterative and produces very cool results very quickly that are a HUGE pain the in ass to model with subD, but people should understand the difference and the reason for subdivision modelling, and I don't think you really covered at all why you would need it.
completely agree with this, this video just came off as him excusing being lazy.
Watching this video I found out that I know little about both ways, and thanks to you now I know that I reaaaally need to learn more about topology.
I usually model chaotically between the two workflows depending on what I modeled but I never really took the time to understand topology.
Thanks Josh!
Imho, the real question is:
A - modelling more slowly with Subsurface, Quads and Curves getting a good topology right away (but with less flexibility on modifications)?
B - or model quickly with Ngons and Booleans but then, when the model is finished, DO A RETOPOLOGIZATION in order to deliver models accepted by everyone and for every need (for any sort of texturing, deform, animation ...)?
I think the answer lies somewhere in between: if you learn to model with the two systems, you will speed up your workflow but above all you will be able to model EVERYTHING (and not just robots for snotchildren) and for every market need. You will be able to model following blueprints and reference images, automotive, people and characters as well as environments and vehicles specifically hard surface, but with the advantage of being able to texturize them without problems.
IMHO
Model HP with quads and subdiv for baking and texturing.
For games - retopo with n-gons to reduce tris count
For animation - retopo with quads
You should do what you need for your project and share as is if you want.
If target is to make universal asset for public, then do all. Or even multiple game-ready retopos with different tris count.
@@severgun exactly one is not better than the other its useful for different applications
That is all very relative to the final output of your model, is it going to get subdivided at render time? deformed? There is nothing wrong with Ngons as long as you are aware when to and when not to use them. I have worked on many films, and everything tends to get subdivided at render time so that polygons never look faceted. The only reason is that nowadays, directors and movies are changing constantly and models/props that were supposed to be seen from far away, all of the sudden are seen much closer, etc...there's many variables nowadays on how movies are made.Concept art is a different story, and so is game assets, personal work, etc. so there is no really wrong/right ( there kind of is :D ) as long as you know when to use them. my 2 cents! Good video
Nope. Try using creases and/or sharp. But overall, for what purpose is this model used? No good for games in the slightest. Oh and to have a national sport that is separated into quarters and you did the first model in one forth of the time of the second? Come on. Create some models that will be useful for some sort of industry and not just use some cubes or a cylinder with holes cut into them and post them as tutorials. Behope your paid tutorials are better than this.
I used to create levels for quake 2 and unreal tournament 20 years ago. Simple cubes etc. The first model in this video is much more logical for me 😊 It's also how I'm learning blender now.
I like watching your stuff Josh but this. Just. No.
From my understanding, you want quads or tris due to how normals act as well as just texturing a model. Sure if you are doing a simple texture in Substance painter it's whatever, but complex textures, you'd want quads to have that square checkered pattern on unwrap. So in the end you want to retopologize your model or clean it up so you don't have n-gons. It's ok to work with at the start. Cause I know majority of the game engines out there turn your models into tris, but if they are in quads it makes it easier and the lighting on the model looks 10x better.
Do you have a video where you turn such a ngon model into the game-ready model to be textured in substance?
still waiting for this answer too
i really wonder this too!
Yeah sure, ngons are fine if you are doing personal work for stills or fast videos. If you want to be a pro modeler, doing professional level VFX modeling, ngons are unnacceptable. You can hide triangles here and there, but ngons should ALWAYS be avoided. They will neveer fit in professional pipelines, so you mught just get in the habit of getting rid of them. Plus, its just lazy to not get rid of them.
So what happens when you have to pass the model to a maya/houdini/c4d artist, they need uv's, correct topo flow, etc. And its Sub-divs, not Sub-surf...
Can you uv and texture the left one and use painter? Also, you can use creases instead of adding edges.
I would like to know this as well
Yea, you need to triangulate it properly though.
@@JoshGambrell what if this is for VFX and not video game, would you recommend quad method for surfacing?
Yes, quads distributed evenly for VFX, almost always
@@JoshGambrell thank you, kinda of disappointed this method is so fast
Your channel has been one of the biggest improvement to my workflow. I spent 3 years learning the quad workflow, to do many things that could be done better with ngons and booleans. Now, my models have improved an insane amount thanks to your videos, so I just want to give a huge thanks!
Happy to help!
I'm not a big fan of the subd workflow at all, it's very tedious and time consuming. The boolean workflow is much more fluid and fun and allows me to focus more on what I want to make instead of how I'm going to make it.
It always depends on what you want to model and that the result is as you expect. Try to model a water hydrant, or the body of a car for example with Booleans and Ngons to see what comes out ... ;)
@@j.javiercarcelesmarmol6649 Yep, like I say curvy and organic meshes must be meticulously crafted with proper quad workflow before running any sort of booleans through them.
@@j.javiercarcelesmarmol6649 Yeah that's true. I modelled a Porsche 911 RSR once and I can't imagine doing it with bools lol
The information here checks out. Good shit man. You just brought my workflow out of the dark ages.
This looks a lot like my orange squeezer
can sure... you can do whatever you want... you do however know nothing about game engines
I am so confused. I just got my degree in computer animation and the entire time my school drilled in my head how NGons are not acceptable and they would bring grades down for them and they would tell us an employer would never hire us if we present a model with NGons. Yet again, I see so many 3D artists model with NGons and they have no problems of any sort with texturing, renders, etc... Striving not to have a single NGon and plan every single edge can be super exhausting, too.
same.. i learn that in school right now .. and it confuses me so much.. when i see so many different opinions on n-gons/topology. .i just get even more questions i need answers to x)
I just recently started doing hard surface modeling with BoxCutter and Hard Ops in Blender, which I'm enjoying a lot, but I came from 3DS Max and the quad-based workflow, and I've already run into situations where remembering quad tricks has helped solve a few hard surface NGON puzzles. Definitely good to know both.
For sure!
Josh thanks for your tutorials man but i have some serious questions about your techniques in box cutter and hard ops
I am a game modeler and it appears that these plugins and ngons are not good for game modeling cuz every model you make with this technique has a lot of weird looking ngons and cleaning them up takes massive time so what is the benefits of these add-ons in game resolution modeling?
Of course its good for making a highpoly model but even then you need to manually retopo that cuz that topology you made is useless so am i wrong about my statement?!
Do this boolean based add-ons really useful in game asset modeling?!!
I believe that his point was that it doesn't usually matter if you have Ngons. Just convert to triangles before exporting to a game engine.
They are fine for game asset modeling. Important thing when working is you know what you are working *for*. If I know it will be a game asset, I take my poly distribution and topology more seriously so I know it will be as little of a hassle as possible to optimize for game engines. We are actually working on an in-depth game asset course covering this, since it’s really hard to explain everything in a single video. It requires specific technique and study.
@@JoshGambrell Thanks for the reply Josh looking forward to see that specific course
But can i ask when that gonna publish and where?Here on the youtube?
Can we know some more exact info?!
Yep, Gumroad, our website, blender market. Pricing will be reasonable compared to content offered. We’ll make sure to announce it ahead of time, if not on release day!
Ngons are good to work with but you need to spend time getting rid of ngons as optimized as possible if you’re making a game asset
ngons aren't less efficient, unless you have extremely thin/long faces
Because of shading?
@@unclejesseppe7323 long thin triangles create extra "quad overdraw". Shading is more expensive for pixels where triangles meet, long thin triangles make that happen significantly more.
Thank you actually. This was a massive problem i was having with my glock 19 and this actually might be a fix
@@Waffle4569 also i was making a point about use in a game lmao
This is all well and good unless you use Rizom UV. If you bring a single ngon into Rizom, your entire model is triangulated. Nothing beats Rizom for hand UV layout. Ngons should be avoided. Engines may triangulate ngons badly, and it's not human readable in the same way. You're far better off with quads (and triangles) for clean meshes, deforming or not.
Chad Ngon vs Virgin Quad
Another thing you can do to reduce time if you're going for the quad/subd workflow, is to retopologize on top of the ngon/boolean model.
TH-cam can use another "Anvil" Blender Tut... but Nondestructive.. using HOPS and BCUTTER. 🤘
Agreed!
Love the vid,your point id so valid,What i use blender for ngons really dont bother me
I usually start designing in "I don't care about topo" mode and when the shape is fine I'll retopo it. Isn't this the way they do it in industry as well?
Because I think you'll run into trouble with texturing stretches if you don't have an evenly distributed mesh. I also learned you shouldn't use subdivision to "shape" a mesh (like you did here - basically create a round edge out of a sharp base one), but just to smooth it out. But I guess this a rule you can really bend.
No need to retopo if you handle shading/triangulation properly (assuming for game assets)
Oh no, I’m not talking about game assets. I’m aiming for 3D short movies. Somewhere between game and cgi / photo realism like Andrew Hodgson is doing. But from him I learned he’s just retopoing stuff concept artists, who don’t care about topo, giving him as part of a pipeline.
I am on the newer side to modelling, and I have no idea what tools you're using right out of the gate. What are those amazingly fast blue and pink boxes you're making that allow you to so easily cut and bevel that initial model? I don't recognize that tool at all, and I haven't seen any other TH-cam tutorial using them. Where do I get that for my Blender, or are they vanilla and I've just never seen anyone using them? Please, someone help, because I don't even know where to start with googling that sort of thing.
Hard ops and boxcutter, im using them in most of my vids and they’re usually in the description
@@JoshGambrell Thanks! I'm looking them up and they seem to be on 2.8 and not 2.9. Am I confused here, or will I have to revert to 2.8 for hard object modelling if I want to use these tools?
Absolutely agree, i've always been a quad workflow guy since day one, because that was how i was taught, and i still to be honest simply because that's what i do automatically. But i've come to learn that it really doesn't matter any more, especially now we have a decent hardened/weighted normals workflow in Blender, the only caveat i would add, is that while triangulating the model will usually sort the topology out with no issues, occasionally if your triangles are too long and thin it can cause issues in many engines, so while you don't need to turn ngons into quads, try to make your ngons evenly distributed so when they're triangulated they make decent sized triangles (as close to right angle as possible).
You’re absolutely right. I usually chop the ngons into bits so I avoid that.
@@JoshGambrell oh and yes you're right there are some engines out there that hate ngons, mainly indie ones like gameguru, but they're far and few between, and not worth worrying about unless you're specifically making assets for them.
Game Engines can handle ngons, but they take extra processor time to work out how to triangulate, so you are basically slowing down your game.
This is why you triangulate beforehand. A triangle is read as a triangle. Triangulating ngons or triangulating quads still yields... triangles.
@@JoshGambrell Yes you have a point, but my OCD won't let me leave an ngon in my model LOL
Quad/subdiv workflow is best for animating characters, where the mesh will be constantly deformed. For vehicles, architecture, anything that is not biological, hardsurf/ngon workflow will do a better job at lower tricount, all you have to do is make sure you have good normals for good shading.
And with a lot of newer tools added in 2.9 Blender, its become really simple to fix normals, and shading stuff is honestly a lot easier as well.
Not just animation actually: in vfx, your ngon model would be rejected instantly. To be fair the quad version presented in the video would be rejected as well, but not as badly because at least it's fixable. Kind of.
Would it be rejected because it might cause issues with other quad based software in the pipeline or the renderer? I wonder if it would be rejected for UE4 or other game engine based VFX work...
Usually when exporting through any format for vfx, render, etc., your model is triangulated anyway. I suppose that when you work with ngons, you just have make sure that you don't have any convex ngons.
@@andrewwelch5017 It would be rejected because in vfx they want even quad for sims, destruction, deformations, displacement maps, etc. So ngons are a no-go, and the quad model presented in the video doesn't has quad, but not even quads.
I can't figure out what option this is: when I'm using boxcutter, sometimes the shape I create has a red background/outline (and works like i expect) and sometimes it has a grey or blue background/outline with low opacity and works in some weird way I can't figure out. Help!
And with the ngon workflow you can assign the bevel width on each edge by setting a crease or bevel weight, and you can use a custom bevel profile to get custom bevel shapes.
Fun fact :
Josh actually hearts every comment !
Great video! Several year ago, when I started to learn 3d modeling, always had problems with quad-subsurf workflow, especially with high quad count of the result. Good that this video showed up in feed when I decided to revisit 3d modeling. Maybe I'll have a better run at it now. Just need to find some hardware at reasonable price.
Clean topology with quads allow for sub division, which can't be done with n‐gons, also you may experience shading errors even with triangulation. Quads are cleaner overall. If you want faster way of modeling with quad topology- prepare predefined surfaces to stitch the model with equal edge counts.
I know a generalist who worked on Avatar among many other CGI intensive projects, these studios do NOT ever accept anything but clean quadded topology, no triangles or extremely minimal and out of camera view.
Hi Josh (or whoever read this), I'm sorry my English in advance.
Could you recommend me an article or video link about what is ngon, quad and I think I heard something about trid? or tri?.
I understood (or maybe misunderstood) that quads is a subdivision in polygons compound of 4 vertex. am I'm right?
Ngon... not sure by now.
And tri or trid... could be something about triangles? 3 vertex?
Thanks
In the Ngon modeling method, different levels of bevel can be achieved by using a second bevel modifier with weight method instead of angles option and later controlling the 'mean bevel weight' for edges, this way we can control the bevels.
guys you can use booleans and bevels and than fix your topology. or you if are eager to just cut some mesh, try houdini sidefx labs tools(like voxelmesh) and learn non destructive modeling techniques. just complaining about how time consuming subd modeling is, is not a mature attitude imo. both workflows are efficient. the workflow in this video is totally efficient for a static mesh in a game. but also, the industry is not limited with games.
Every time I pick knife and try to fix topology for quad I just eventually fuck it up even worse, increasing the number of geometry drastically while keeping one area dependent of the wrong cut made to fix something in the other area. I'm sure aware of topology flow and its localization, but I decided to try it myself without direct tips first. I sucked 🤏
And yet I still don't understand what the practical difference of all of this. If it's not character, then ok to have ngons. What's the key factor? Shading? Right triangulation? And what wrong triangulation may do then?
I'm not a professional 3d artist, but I think that a clean topology make your life easier for the UV unwrapping....bake your normal map or to have a easy work when u export to zbrush....it Juste 3 exemples....it true that u will model your object 4 time faster if you don't care about ngones...but u will loose this time after when u go to unwrap it or add details in zbrush...
You don't want Ngons in geometry that requires deformation or have complex compound surfaces. You need to be very careful with Ngons on non-planar surfaces.
This is lame, why does everyone insist I need expensive addons use to use blender effectively?
And why in the years that these addons have existed and become indispensable have that not been added to blender itself?
The creators of paid addons for blender are justifying there greed with "compensation" like blender hasn't proven that being compensated for your work is best done by giving it freely and not intentionally artificially limiting the outreach of your work.
This is lame.
I just wanted to know about Ngons.
Not get my fifth boxcutter ad of the hour.
And I'm sitting here proud that I took only 4 hours to model a basic looking long sword... And I still had Tris!
i ever use quads workflow... i studied this 10 years ago with maya and ok, is difficult to understand topology and make complicate shapes with only quads sometimes, but if you want to export to zbrush to make a high poly from a blockout model is better to have your base made with quads to avoid artifacts... after this you can use tris for the low poly model and baking, but with quads at blockout model probably is slower but you have a perfect base to make the rest of the workflow without headaches...
"If you triangulate the mesh that has N-gons, it should work with any game engine anyways". This is simillar to humans discovering fire.
when i read the title i thought to myself
Is this guy on crack?
Then i remembered that i only made my first Ngon free model yesterday and ive been using blender for 1 year
Sorry but you guys are missing one major issue when dealing with ngons. When you have to render animation the render engine tessellates every frame into triangles. So if you have ngons the triangles are recalculated every frame to solve the ngons and my triangulate the model different from the last frame . This causes flickering in the shading which can ruin a render
Great tutorial, except you keep saying "subsurf_" instead of subdiv .. Anyway :)
ok is all the shit that looks extremely helpful going on here from like hard ops and boxcutter or do I really just need to brush up on blender? Like the "joins" that were slicing the surface up and replacing faces and adding vertices and the snapping single vertex to the others?
You should explain how you set your interface that way where you get to just box select over things and things happen. This is the first time I’m ever seeing someone do that. Please respond on this. Because it caused me to just close out on the first tutorial I watched from you.
i was unsure if ngons were super bad so i kept trying quads and confusing myself everytime, i see why now
there are SOOO many reasons to use quads. Portable lighting would be one. If you have to use boolean anda retop to model... your not really modeling your just using filters
so after watch this and your video about triangulate in blender, can we use boleans and after that triangulate and will be ok as a game asset? I'm asking because im use to model with quads and i find difficult to create many hard surfaces using only quads without have the need to subdivide more
also for adding supporting loops the best way for vanilla users is to use a 2 edge bevel with profile on 1
thank u !!
I think that it really depends on if you want to create some static mesh, probably even hard-surface, or if you try to create something you want to deform with an armature later, I guess. I model for 3d printing and for animation, with very different workflows. Booleans are great for hard surface, but for animation later, you probably will have to refine the mesh afterwards. Quad is "correct" if you want to deform and use SubD afterwards.
You should always have in mind how the model is used afterwards.
Agreed, but that is why the title is “hard surface” because there are limitations ;)
Even for animations, if the model doesn't bend, I don 't see the problem.
Adding destructive edge loops... hello 2004 3D modeling. :(
You right, any method has it's usecase.
99% this is fine, the rest works for big productions where the model has to be perfect in the old way.