Maya 2015

Lecture Details

After having finished shaping a model it is often necessary to do a little cleanup in order to remove unnecessary geometry. This is especially common after having applied a smooth operation onto your models. The reason for performing a cleanup on your model is to simply decrease the overall face count the model will require to render. Models with lower face counts require less computer power to render within a game environment. Fewer faces also mean there are fewer points for the computer to process and as a result the games resources can be used elsewhere.

There are a few things that you have to be weary of when doing a cleanup on your model. The first thing is that you need to ensure the edges that you are removing do not have too much of an effect on the shape itself. Minor changes to the shape of the model are fine. As you become more familiar with the capabilities of normal maps you will also be more aware of what you can do with them to make up for the minor changes. Another important factor to be weary of is edge spiders. Deleting an edge loop that connects to an edge spider will cause an N-Gon to be created. N-Gons are typically bad news as they are not accepted by high poly sculpting programs and many game engines. Yet another thing to be weary of is any edges that are necessary for the deformation of the model during animation. Be sure not to remove any edges that you purposely added for the deformation of the model.

Disclaimer

The above video was developed by Brain Poof. The views and opinions being expressed by any narrator of any multimedia provided on this channel are the sole product of Brain Poof.