I have been modeling a low poly weapon and was using F to combine faces when I discovered… you can do this to create NGons! The problem is… I didn’t save a version of the model from before I reduced it to a pile of NGons… and now it won’t play nice with… well… pretty much anything.
The original thought was… collapse the polygons into NGons that defined the body of the weapon so texturing would be easier… then, kick the obj out and do a little work in Sculptris…
What actually happened is, the upper receiver of my weapon (a separate object) cannot be attached now because a boolean modifier error (presumably from the NGons though there are open edges at the intersection so I don’t know if that plays a part or not). The obj can’t be imported into Sculptris because it apparently doesn’t like polygons with more than 2 edges (or somesuch).
This problem has revealed a few things that I need answered if anyone can spare the knowledge…
1, can I mass remove floating vertices that aren’t a corner
2, can I recalculate the mesh into quads and retain it’s original shape
3, do NGons effect booleans
4, do open edges effect booleans
5, if I keep my lower poly model for textures as originally planned, will I be able to associate that UV map to the recalculated/retopo’ed model
6, is there a way to enable an incremental save rather than just overwriting? I can’t even re-open the pre-low poly model and want to avoid this problem in the future…
Quick and easy way to convert Ngons / Bmesh object back to quads is to use Remesh modifier. Just add it and apply it. It will create quads all over. Experiment.
Ngons are hand tool to fill things temporary. It is very fast. But, if you are going to mess with that surface, it is best to mesh it properly.
Okay, I gave remesh a try and the only way I was able to get it to re-approximate the original geometry was by cranking it up to 10 iterations… which gave roughly 1 mil faces and was essentially unusable.
I’m pretty shocked at how limited the retopo is in Blender I’m just going to download 3dsMax and fix it there.
Sorry for triple post… I just went in and did a manual re-topo… it probably needed it anyway. Most of my original questions remain though if anyone has a few moments to answer them.
can I mass remove floating vertices that aren’t a corner
press L while floating your mouse over a part you want to save to select all linked verts. Then press H to hide. Then press A to select all the floating verts. then delete them. Then Alt-H to unhide.
can I recalculate the mesh into quads and retain it’s original shape
If it’s low poly, you probably want to do this manually. Pressing J while selecting two verts on a ngon will create an edge between them.
do NGons effect booleans
Most likely. I would suggest triangulating the mesh at least in the area where the two meshes are intersecting.
do open edges effect booleans
Not sure exactly what you mean here, but it’s usually better to make sure the geometry has no holes in it before attempting booleans.
if I keep my lower poly model for textures as originally planned, will I be able to associate that UV map to the recalculated/retopo’ed model
Not sure exactly what you mean again, but you can bake textures from a high poly onto a low poly (and vice-versa).
is there a way to enable an incremental save rather than just overwriting? I can’t even re-open the pre-low poly model and want to avoid this problem in the future
It’s a good idea to put each project in a separate folder, and save different versions after making extreme changes or applying modifiers.
Floating verts are (at least in other programs) vertices that do not assist in the creation of a polygon (either floating in space or loose on an edge or randomly in the middle of a polygon).
Thanks for the answers and suggestions guys. I’ve been away from 3d for a while in the land of concept art so coming back is like being away on a trip for a while and forgetting where you left a few things.
I’ll give remesh a try, thanks 
I’m just going to download 3dsMax and fix it there.