To connect vertices or not?

|strofix|

Something that I struggle with in the spark editor is whether new faces that I create should be created using edges from existing ones, or if they should just be made floating in the ether, and then moved into place.

Countless times I've found myself severely screwed over by connected vertices that go completely crazy, or recreate themselves 50 times in the exact same spot. A lot of the time faces will also simply refuse to form, even though though a complete connection has been made

Other times its really annoying having to select each individual face of a structure, rather than double clicking and getting all the relevant connected faces.

Whats the best way to make structures composed of many faces?

Insane

It's really a matter of personal preference. Having everything connected together can make geometry hard to edit, whilst having everything separated can make it hard to manage. You'll need to find a spot in between where you're most comfortable.

For the way I work, I generally keep things together if they constitute a discrete "object": for example I might keep a complex pillar welded together but I would keep it separate from the floor and ceiling to make it easier to quickly select and move/copy etc.

ObliviousSight

The way I work is have all of my geometry in the level welded together (I have an obsession with 'clean' geometry). If I need to edit a section I tend to use the cut and paste tool to separate it and then work on it. I then reweld it once I've finished.

Flaterectomy

It also depends on your workflow, and how you use the tools at your disposal. Some people copy, move, and re-size faces a lot, while I personally mostly use the line tool. The latter method results in a lot more connected geometry than the former. I've been trying to separate sections by leaving doorways unconnected, so it's easier to manage, like Insane said, though my floors, walls, and ceilings are usually connected.

WorthyRival

When in doubt. I like to added the geometry object to a group before welding. That way later down the track you can just click the group copy and paste and its unwelded again. Then delete the welded geometry. With out losing the work.

I tend to weld everything and come across the same dilemma all the time.

Chris0132

The way I was taught was that connected vertices render better/more easily, and that unconnected vertices are dreadful evil things and must be avoided at all costs.

On the other hand, not connecting your vertices can save on polycount. A flat surface with a bump on it would use far more vertices if the bump was extruded from the surface, because you would have at least four coplanar quads to join the flat face to the (in this case cubic) extrusion, and coplanar faces are wasted faces, for the most part.

Of course you also need to connect vertices to use things like smoothing groups, and possibly to make occlusion work properly? So sometimes yes you need to weld things together. Also welding things together when there's no reason not to is probably a good idea, as it will reduce the chance of things getting misaligned, and if you had each face disconnected from every other face, then each face would have to use three or four unique vertices, whereas if you weld them together they can share vertices, which again reduces the amount of surplus data you have lying about the place.

So, if just intersecting things saves you polies, I think it's probably better to do that. On the other hand, there may be benefits to connecting them in terms of how the engine processes the geometry. It would depend on how the engine is constructed and how it handles connected and unconnected vertices. Basically, ask Max.

Stardog

I keep things as seperate as possible, but not down to the face level. I split it into parts that make sense. Like a corridor will be seperate from rooms. Then I can re-use it somewhere else just by double-clicking and copying it. This example would be 3 seperate parts: