/3/ - 3DCG

>>460019
>I'm new to 3D, but I heard having triangles when modelling with squares is a bad thing. Why is that?

In many workflows, you're going to end up smoothing your mesh using a smoothing algorithm. Triangles mess up the smoothing algorithm because they break up the uniformity of the topology (which should be all quads in the best case scenario). All quads = a very uniform topology. Throw a triangle in the mix and suddenly the smoothing algorithm (as well as the edge flow) suddenly gets wonky around the triangle.

tl;dr: It's not that triangles are bad; it's that quads are just infinitely preferable whenever you can help it.

Think I'm finally done with the modeling portion. Not sure about one thing, though:

This is the high-poly model, which I'll use to bake a normal map to a low-poly version later.

These images are using Maya's smooth view; the actual model is nowhere near this smooth looking.

So, if I want to make all this smoothness to a lower-poly model, the smooth view won't be enough, right? I have to actually go to Mesh -> Smooth to get all that actual detail onto the mesh before I use it to bake to the low poly mesh, right?