Modeling in triangles or quads

[Tocpe]

I have a question for you guys and gals out there. When modeling for the Unreal Engine, is it best to to all your modeling in triangles? Or can you model in quads and triangles and then convert to solely tris, or does it even matter?

[[SAS]Solid Snake]

Everything is a polygon anyways, just that in Max I know you can model in quads, but they are just two triangles with the intersection line hidden. If you can export it as an ASE, then it should import fine into UT2004... as long as the polycount stays below 10'000 for a static mesh and 35'000 for a PSK.

[chip]

Originally Posted by Tocpe

I have a question for you guys and gals out there. When modeling for the Unreal Engine, is it best to to all your modeling in triangles? Or can you model in quads and triangles and then convert to solely tris, or does it even matter?

modeling with quads is OK, but i'd recommend doing an explicit conversion to triangles before exporting. this not only ensures you have all triangles exported (quads can sometimes be exported as only one tri, leaving a hole in your model), but also lets you inspect the model as it will appear in-game & decide whether you want to do any optimizations like edge flipping, reduction, etc., prior to export.