Ah, well, now, you say 'apparently'.....but who said that? Someone who doesn't know why probably.
If you don't intend to sub-divide the mesh then a mix of tri's and quads is fine.....you proven that already.
People do 'say' you should stick with all quads but for a 'hard surface' model its not really necessary...sometimes it can't be avoided.
Tri's are good for animation, they allow for deformation of surfaces but again, with a 'hard surface' its not going to deform so quads are fine.
I'm rambling here but its really good to see you not using turbo/mesh smooth....its a sign of a very good modeller!
Looking forward to the next instalment.
Regards.
MrTom.
my graphics tutor told me that... says a lot.
I suppose seeing as it's a biological model that will deform i suppose i should leave the head triangulated, i do plan on rigging it. It would explain why game engines tend to favour triangulated models over quads.
it's great to know I'm doing something right though. thanks
You've gone a long way since your first 3d images, Z.
This one's a beauty.
As for your meme.... nice one. But frankly , you know what you're doing and where you want to go with your 3d knowhow.....
Thank you Dv8,

funnily enough, I've touched 3ds max very little for some time, I've mostly been using it for importing basic models(mainly just slightly modified boxes) into a game. I started this project off not knowing how I was going to approach the new revision and I just settled into it after a few failed attempts to start it off, I knew the basics of how to edge model (hold shift and move the new edge out) but I didn't think I was very good at it not as good to create something like this with a half decent poly flow and no rendering errors.
most of the time I just looked at the basic shape and thought about what more I needed to add to make it look better, I wasn't really following a specific concept, other than the original to use as a guideline, so long as it looked okay and rendered fine I was good. But there were a lot of times where i was just making the best guess possible, especially when I was fixing errors that cropped up and joining troublesome edges.
It's the first time I've used a multi/subobject material and multiple material IDs, as well as multiple smoothing groups.
It was a pretty steep learning curve nevertheless; i learned a lot from it, and I'm still learning a lot now while doing the body armour.
It's a good little project to keep me occupied. I'm going to see about porting it into UDK, or real virtuality or Cryengine, whichever makes the most sense at the time. Real Virtuality is a pain in the ass, but it's a pain in the ass that I know how to use...
I want to see what it will look like lit properly.