So im making my first smartphone model [my own phone since its VERY nice looking]. And i plan to make a Ad commercial animation out of it for my portfolio.
Model’s going well enough. but im concerned about the topology.
Also, is the screen and the side buttons normally separated from the main body and not attached and so i dont need to care about connecting the vertices?
Using all quad is important if the model will bend - like a human. The camera can have Ngons everywhere. As long as it is in flat areas. It is not going to bend. Well OK - modern phones bend - but that part will be all quads.
If a part like a button is separate in real life - then it will look more realistic as a separate mesh island in CG. Feel free to show me where someone told you all things MUST be one continuous mesh… It might be better for a character to be all one connected mesh (apart from the eyes), but nothing hard surface needs to follow that rule.
Think about how messy the topology of the camera bump will be if each lens is connected to the rest of the bump.
You missed the obvious example of the opposite. The Apple logo is made as one piece in the model. It is obviously several different and separate materials in real life.
