So, I've learned that n-gons are bad and that quads are good (agree or disagree?). I've also heard that triangles, albeit not as bad as the dreaded n-gon, are not preferred either.
My current side project features a low-poly van as the centerpiece, and it's looking pretty good. However, I'm finding n-gons peppered throughout the mesh. What can I say? It happens.
I've heard that a sure fire method of finding n-gons is to insert an edge loop. If the mesh won't accept an edge loop, then you have a poly with more than 4 vertices. So, I've been doing that regularly, but I find that it works sort of one face at a time, if that makes sense. It doesn't find all the n-gons.
So, I discovered a new method that I thought I'd share that seems to work pretty darn well. Now, you experts out there may scoff at this method, or share a faster way using one of those fancy five fingered hotkey combos. Others, however, may find this process very useful.
The result was an instant selection, highlighting all the n-gons in my mesh (see image below).
For me personally, I think this is a very useful tip, and I hope you will find it useful too!
Thanks in advance for your comments and suggestions.
jdeclanflynn that is a great way of finding N-gons!
I use it often, but leave the setting at the default (make sure to de-select everything (ALT+A) before doing this to get all non-quads:
(And I have View > Adjust Last Operation un-checked, because it annoys me more than it is helpful, so I press F9 to bring that up, when I need to make adjustments...)
Now all quads are selected, so you can press CTRL+I to invert the selection and get all triangles and N-gons.
There are however many situations, where N-gons and triangles are not bad; here is a great explanation by Gleb Alexandrov:
Great tips!
So, I've learned that n-gons are bad and that quads are good (agree or disagree?). I've also heard that triangles, albeit not as bad as the dreaded n-gon, are not preferred either.
Definitely a tricky subject - I'll say that none are bad or good, but it's true that n-gons and triangles are frequently less desirable in many common situations. Hopefully I can do a more in-depth video soon, but that video by Gleb that spikey linked to above is a good one. If you're still getting started with modeling though, I wouldn't worry about it too much - focusing on creating meshes with only quads is a great rule of thumb that I'd still recommend sticking to until you have an excellent reason for breaking it.