Skining the model, triangulate or not?

Nixellion · Aug 2014

Hello, I have a simple question, but I did not yet find the answer to this.

For a game, is it better if I skin and animate a triangulated model, or original, with quads? Or does not matter?

Because from my side, I think that skinning is easier to setup on a quadrangulated model, easier to see loops. But it deformations or just anything else is better on triangulated model from the game engine perspective, I would work with it.

Thanks!

Adam Chilton · Aug 2014

All polygons are triangles. Quads are mainly there to help see the model in a clearer form. At the end of the day what you are skinning is actually triangulated, however keep things as quads, because like you say it is easier to see the elements of the mesh.

Noors · Aug 2014

You might want to control the way some polygons fold with animation by manually triangulate. It's more an issue on very low poly tho.
For the engine, it's the same.

Vailias · Aug 2014

It depends on how your engine accepts your animated model. It will be triangulated in the end. Some formats give you an option to triangulate, some engines can triangulate a model on import, and some cannot, and will simply toss an error.
Some engines can take animation data and discard the mesh data, so it doesn't matter at all, some don't, and will have issues if the animated model and the base model don't match.
Generally you'll want to triangulate it, at least before export, and, as Noors mentions, turn any edges you need turned for the deformations you're going to do.

Nixellion · Sep 2014

Thanks for your replies

Skining the model, triangulate or not?

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