Blocking it out first with square polys seems like a good starting point, but surely you need to change it to an editable mesh to start turning edges at the end, right? Or again, is it just me?įirst of all, Editable poly and editable mesh give the same polycount read out. If modeling low-poly, I think you really need to see it as an editable mesh to see where you could sculpt better definition of your mesh with the faces available to you.

Or is that just me that thinks so?ĭon’t get me wrong, I model with square polys whenever possible, but that’s usually because I intend to throw a meshsmooth on it in the end anyway, as I’m invariably modelling high-poly these days. With square polys, you’re inevitably losing out on some of this potential definition of your shape. Look at the way Paul Steed used to model, every edge mattered in the definition of a model, often turning an edge totally changed a shape. I don’t think a model built with square polys will be able to give you the same amount of definition as 2 tri’s (which can indicate a curve). Maybe it’s just me, but I think the whole poly thing is getting confused alot these days. Ultimately, for games, tri’s are what counts, as that what everything strips down to in the end anyway. They give the face count of an editable poly (Max gives you the poly count, not the tri count when you do this to an editable poly), where more often than not, if converted to tri’s, the face count would be very different. Unfortunately, this is something that seems to be more and more common among modellers when giving poly counts.

Quake 3 higher polygon player models