Can anyone give some insight on poles?

[Mousel]

To achieve good poly flow, I know to use as few poles (a vertex that has more or less than 4 edges, usually 3 or 5) as possible. However, I recently watched a car modeling tutorial (via 3D World) and the instructor refused to allow poles in his model (in some cases preferring n-gons!). This made me think that there might be something about poles and the problems they can cause that I don't know about.

Can anyone offer some experience in dealing with them and how, from a technical standpoint, they effect the smoothing algorithm's ability to produce good curvature?


Cheers,
Mousel

[MaVCArt]

poles are really not that bad, but you gotta know where to place them

in any case, you don't want poles on a car model, so the instructor was right to do that; cars have curved surfaces all over, and a single pole stands out instantly, so you really don't want them there. on the other hand, if you can manage to put them away somewhere you can't see them, no one is really going to care

the trick that I find best to use in high poly modeling is to use as few polygons as possible for the model, and let the turbosmooth handle most of the shape defining; the fewer the amount of polygons you have before smoothing, the more control you have and less you will have to deal with poles, n-gons and the ever-feared TRIANGLE!!!

in any case, poles are not a good thing, but sometimes you do have to deal with them: one side of a character's face, for example, always has around three poles, where the polygon rings of the lips, nose and mouth come together with those of the ears, neck and chin. you just can't avoid them sometimes, and in those cases, you just put them somewhere where the result is still as smooth as it should be.

one thing about those poles though: 5 edges converging is usually the maximum you want; starting from 6 converging edges, things are gonna get pinched, which is what you don't ever want in a high poly model

hope this helps!

[Mousel]

That most definitely helped. Thanks, MaVCArt!