Feeling: Busy
Music: Hall and Oates - Maneater

Oh man! Been hard at work, doing a few local jobs in addition to my own work. Posted two new images in the gallery, four-panel sketches and color keys of environment concepts, and I'm in the middle of getting a new model constructed - it's my first non-character mesh, pretty exciting!


As I'm working on my next model as well as conversing with people I'm working on a project remotely with, I've come across time and again the concept of a polycount, which I understand in the way of optimization for games, but never a definite answer as to what is the proper way to count said polys. Some people say you count by quads, but just as many others say to count tris. Rather confusing!

In my head, I think it's more proper to count triangles, as a quad can be split into two triangles, and those triangles are the simplest primitive plane while working in a 3D package. Game engines break down quads into tris anyway, so it seems to me the only reason to count polys by quads is because a person models largely in quads. Movies may be a different matter, where you have a much larger count and quads make a generally smoother mesh.

When modeling in Maya I have both counts, so it makes little difference which someone says to go by, but in a technical sense, it seems not only proper, but better for a workflow to count in tris. Either way it's a small matter, but it seems rather odd since parties are clearly divided on what the "polycount" really is.