Should the ngons on the top of the cylinder be avoided or not?
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4$\begingroup$ They're usually fine, if isolated with an inset like that. I don't know how yours got twisted, though... $\endgroup$– Robin Betts ♦Commented Jul 29, 2022 at 19:51
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3$\begingroup$ As long as you know that it'll be triangulated when rendered or brought into an engine and can deal with the results, you can model whatever you want. :p $\endgroup$– Allen SimpsonCommented Jul 29, 2022 at 20:01
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1$\begingroup$ An easy way to guarantee a 'look' is to run the command 'poke faces' with the ngon selected. $\endgroup$– Allen SimpsonCommented Jul 29, 2022 at 20:02
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1$\begingroup$ At worst, yes, but the way it looks here it should be flat $\endgroup$– Allen SimpsonCommented Jul 29, 2022 at 20:22
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2$\begingroup$ As long as the ngon is planar, and planar with all of its neighbors, and convex, it doesn't matter how it gets triangulated (including via poke faces) for purposes of smooth shading or for purposes of C-C subdivision, which are the two things people generally care about when they're dealing with topo. For vertex color or distorted UV, the ngon may not be desirable, and the poked face will probably be what most people want. $\endgroup$– NathanCommented Jul 29, 2022 at 20:25
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1 Answer
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Form follows function
It is all depends on what we need the geometry for.
If we are going to work with procedural geometry, and we will use such modifiers as bevel or boolean it's better to have ngons, because the faces of the model, which will be affected by the modifiers in this way will have simple topology, and therefore they will be easier to interact with the modifiers.
It is different if we are going to use Subdivision Surface modifier. In this case there is a special workflow in which mesh consists only of quads (faces with 4 vertices), to have nice shading and avoid artifacts.
Another option if we work with game ready models. When we are modeling lowpoly(or doing retopology) we can work with both types: ngons and quads. Ngons help to reduce the number of vertices, working with quads make UV unwrapping easier. But before baking textures and exporting to game engines we must triangulate all model to avoid baking and shading artifacts in future.
This is due to the fact that all faces consist of triangles, but each engine interprets triangulation differently, so that we do not leave triangulation to the engine we have to make it ourselves, so that it has only one single triangulation throughout the pipeline - the one we made.
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2$\begingroup$ This might be one of the best short summaries on this topic :)). Bookmarked and will direct similar questions here :) $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 30, 2022 at 9:29
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1$\begingroup$ @JachymMichal, Thank you for your comment, I am honored. =) $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 30, 2022 at 10:22