Ive seen in some game magazines and other places wireframe versions of levels etc and their faces are always triangles and never quads is this more efficient and would it speed the game engine any if you made all your 4 vertex planes into 3 vertex triangles. Ill do some tests i just wondered if anyone knows anyway if I havent explained itwell enough just say. Thanks
yes quads are split into two triangles anyway. so effectively they are half as slow…well not quite, as the ammount of vertice make a difference
-Luke
yea but quads take 1/2 as much memory even tho technically they are the same as 2 triangles.
Maybe using quads is more efficient, but you can end up with some problems if you use quads because video cards can only render stuff in triangles. When you start your game the engine automatically changes the quads into 2 triangles, so it’s the same thing, but the computer may not do it the way you want it to look.
Pooba
If you use a quad, and the points do not lie on a flat plane, then the way it splits it into two triangles can vary. If they lie on a flat plane, then quads should work, but it’s generally a good idea to work in triangles. Gives you more control, and eliminates a step in the rendering process.
ok so is there way to convert a mesh into triangles easily I know there’s the decimator so is this what you are supposed to use?
Nope, just use the handy dandy hotkey: ctrl-t
Just remember to check and make sure it made the triangles the way you want it to.
If you want to make sure it makes them right, select all the points, press x to delete the face, then select 3 points at a time, press f and make it into two faces. But you’ll lose your texturing this way.
This is my only gripe about modeling in Blender! In most other packages you would use a function called turning edges. You just click on the edge that you want to change and it flips the edge the other way without destroying texturing and vertex coloring. This is my number one feature request. Saluk, is that a tool you think could be created in Python?
TorQ
Blender has edge-turning!
select two triangles that share an edge, and press Ctrl-F. The normals on both faces must be on the same side though. (Use Ctrl-N to recalculate all normals to the outside.)
Wow, how very nice:)
ctrl-f, whoda thunk?
THAT IS THE COOLEST THING I HAVE SEEN THIS WEEK!!! YEAH, YOU ROCK! BLENDER JUST WENT UP A WHOLE 'NOTHER NOTCH!! YEAH> WOOO!!! THANKS.
TorQ
I am excited.
Thanks for the tips but alas it does little in the way of performance but it probably helps if your using realtime lighting more faces better lighting is the way I see it unless there is a way of making proper realtime lighting. (Where you can have a single face that can have both light and shadow on it at the same time, what ive seen so far is that it just lights up single faces and make yor objects ugly if they’re low poly).
Well, low poly objects don’t look that bad with lighting if you use smooth lighting instead of solid lighting (set smooth in the edit buttons accomplishes this).
And we’re sorry if we made you think there would be a noticable performance gain by switching, it probably IS a tiny bit faster, but it’s such a small difference that due to other factors, doesn’t really change anything.