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I'm throwing a 3D triangulated mesh into an acoustic simulator. The simulator instructions say that ideally it wants quads. If it receives triangles, it will consider them as a degenerate quad (i.e. A B C -> A B C A)

Is there some automatic method of converting most (or all) of my triangles into quads? Somehow pairing them up...

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3 Answers 3

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While in Edit Mode, select the parts of your mesh you want to convert and use Alt + J or from the Faces special menu with Ctrl + F > Tris to Quads to convert tris to quads or via the 3d view header, use, Mesh > Faces > Tris to Quads.

This tool converts the selected triangles into quads by taking adjacent tris and removes the shared edge to create a quad, based on a threshold.

To create a quad, this tool needs at least two adjacent triangles. If you have an even number of selected triangles, it is also possible not to obtain only quads. In fact, this tool tries to create "squarest" quads as possible from the given triangles, which means some triangles could remain.

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    $\begingroup$ This brings up the settings for it, but where is the button to actually execute it? :/ $\endgroup$
    – Hakanai
    Commented Mar 4, 2018 at 2:55
  • $\begingroup$ @Trejkaz What do you mean, I gave the shortcut and the menu option. Not all operators have a specific set button in Blender. $\endgroup$
    – iKlsR
    Commented Mar 4, 2018 at 5:38
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    $\begingroup$ What I mean is, when I execute it using the shortcut, it doesn't change the model immediately, but instead, brings up some kind of settings for it in the bottom left of the screen, so it seems like there is some additional unintuitive step that I can't figure out by looking at the UI. $\endgroup$
    – Hakanai
    Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 23:48
  • $\begingroup$ @Trejkaz. Not sure what is happening on your end. This (has always and still) executes instantly both ways, tested on the latest version. The options can be tweaked dynamically before confirming (which is just clicking away elsewhere and or doing something else). $\endgroup$
    – iKlsR
    Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 23:59
  • $\begingroup$ @iKlsR, I had the same question, until I realised that Blender has already applied the tool, according to the settings in the bottom left menu. If you change the settings dramatically in the settings pane, you should see the mesh change. Alt + J just applies the tris-to-quad tool with the default settings. $\endgroup$
    – MechtEngineer
    Commented May 8, 2018 at 4:43
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Another option is the Remesh modifier. This modifier will result in a mesh that is all quads, regardless of the topology of the input mesh. From the wiki:

The Remesh modifier is a tool for generating new mesh topology based on an input surface. The output follows the surface curvature of the input, but its topology contains only quads.

Note that if the mesh was originally quads, iKlsR's solution is what you want as it will preserve the topology (however it is not guaranteed to result in an all-quad mesh).

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Switch orientation to "Normal" mode, select the tris then S,Z,Z,0. Now you can merge them: Mesh > Faces > Tris to Quads

If you merge them directly without rescaling it wont make a difference, because internally 3D software will re-triangulate them anyways.

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