Topology question regarding circular holes

Question

Hopefully general topology questions are ok here. If not then I apologize. I'm still new and trying to focus on topology. I'm working on an insect type model (bee/wasp) and have kept it all quads but have now inserted circular holes for the legs.

My question is: if this is intended for a video game should I use n-gons to "contain" the holes and keep it low poly? Or insert edge loops to keep it all quads? Will having n-gons around the holes cause problems for texturing and animating later? Also I noticed that the edge loops I added makes the model all quads but also introduces 6 sided poles, is that bad? Did I do it incorrectly?

I've attached images with and without the edge loops. Thanks so much for any insight you can provide. I want to be confident in my topology choices.

Image without "extra loops"

Image with "extra loops" (and 6 sided poles :/)

Reference Image (still a ways to go lol)

Answer 1

For a game engine, use triangles. Most game engines do not support ngons anyway, and the ones that do are just converting the ngon to triangles.

In general modeling, you should try to avoid triangles and ngons (there are some cases where they are ok), however when modeling for a game, low poly takes precedent over nice topology, so triangles are normal.

In your case, even if it was not a game model, I would not want a ngon in the middle of the model. Ngons have a nasty way of deforming a model, and any ngon that is not perfectly flat will cause shading artifacts.

What is the technical difference between an Ngon and a bunch of Tri's?
When should N-Gons be used, and when shouldn't they?