Begginer questions on game models

[itachi2002]

Hi, I have a few questions on things that i couldn't clarify from tutorials.

Firstly, when you  have a complete model, should you harden the edges on the normals or keep them as they are. Originally my model looks better without harden edges, but in some areas I get strange unnatural shadows like on the picture. Hardening the edges fixes it, but it doesn't look smooth and i don't know if texturing is going to fix it or not (i'm going to bake a smooth high poly mesh as texture) 

Another thing is should mt model consists only of quads or only triangles or there is no actual difference. I know I dot have to keep faces with more than 4 angles.

Thanks in advance!

[daunish · Accepted solution]

For me, hard edges vs soft usually make little difference. I always keep them soft just for consistency, or hard to catch any poly issues.

Typically what would be your best bet is to have the low poly mesh, and make a high poly mesh that has all the hard or soft edges represented. Then bake a normal map onto the low poly from the high poly. This way you get your object looking exactly right regardless of your normals. Most games do this, and its how you get correct lighting and perceived detailed resolution.

As for the tris vs quads, I don't think that super important either. In Maya, I prefer to keep quads as they deform and smooth better, but I'm pretty sure Unreal and Unity will convert them to tris on import. Typically game engines prefer tris as they are mathematically simpler to represent than quads.

And yes, never have ngons... anywhere

Hope this answers your question!

[itachi2002]

Thank you very much!