Hello. I’m a newbie at 3D Game Studios and this is my first post. I have been experimenting with 3D modeling in Maya 6 for some time now. I know that it is always good edict to make each face 4 sided (plus it makes subdividing look crisper). I have noticed when adding models in 3DGS each face is triangular. Why is that?

My next question. I have been working on something on Maya to import into 3DGS but I’m not sure if each face should be 3 sided or 4 sided. Does it matter? If so then what are the requirements?

I use both all the time (a LOT) and have no problems! I'm not sure which is better for A6, but really I can't tell the difference. If there are some 5 sided faces sometimes the engine will crash as it loads, but usually 3 and 4 sides work fine. Probably someone here who is more technical could point out one is better than the other, but my 3-4 mishmash works without a hitch. Hope that helps.

Usually if I have a problem with a 5 sided or mysterious problem face I just triangulate the face and suddenly it works.

as far as i know are quadriteral faces always made of two triangular faces... u just dont see them in maya.
because MED only uses tri's u can see them there.

but this doesn't mean, that u have to model with triangular faces in maya.
a good and clean poly-flow is not only important for good deformation when animating, its also important for how fast the mesh can load.
also check that all your vertices are welded before exporting.

all these statements i've done are just "guesses" by me.
i never had an education on game engines. but its kind of a summary of what i have read in this forum.

i hope this helps

cheers
sinnlos

PS: Welcome to the Forums!!!

Yea sinnlos is right. Anything that is rendered is converted to triangles (that includes quads, splines etc), even in Maya. It's called tesselation or triangulation. Maya just doesn't display some edges to make it look like a quad because the mesh will look cleaner.

DirectX, of which Gamestudio uses for rendering, only understands triangles so everything is made of triangles. You can have up to 65,536 vertices and theoretically up to 4,294,705,156 triangles (after 65,534^2) maximum per model. An X-sided face would need X-2 triangles to form the shape.

So does this means it does not matter how many sides I use because any face can be cut into triangles, 5, 6, 48, etc? (Still keeping in mind that 3dgs crashes sometimes when jetpack monkey does it) I’m guessing it goes pretty good when you guys use 5+ sided faces.

No, i mean only once or twice have i had mysterious problems where it wouldn't load up the level, when i knew i had some obviously screwy faces in there, and just triangulating the face fixed it. I'm not sure how far you can go, but I think if you go to 4, 5, or even 6 you'll be okay. 4's are best i think.

Just convert your meshes to triangles in your modeller before exporting, this will get rid of any geometry problems..

my advice is to keep all polys 4-sided when u model in maya
the benefits are:
-edgeloops (keeps it easy to model and select polys, vertices, whatever)
-good deformation when animating
-when u export/import into MED u dont have to worry about 5/6/7-sided polygons, which might cause troubles.

cheers
sinnlos