So let's talk about the elephant in the room. Topology. What is it? Should you care? When, why, and how? So first up, yes. Topology is very important. And anyone who tells you otherwise has no idea what they're talking about. That is why we get rid of vertex clusters early on if we can. Now within this area of topology being important, there's a radical fringe vocal minority of raging anti-trangle elitist terrorist groups that I call the tri-police. And what they do is they look at your model and in all caps, type things like, what the fuck, bro, are those triangles? Triangles are a legal, you dipshit. Why would anyone pay money for this awful model? I might have actually enjoyed league if their topology didn't suck so much ass. Geez, man, those triangles really ruin the play experience, bro. Yes, those are real people. And when you encounter these people, the only moral and ethical thing you can do is tell them kindly to fuck the hell off. Because the truth is triangles are a pro-gamer move. Yes, you should always strive for quads, but triangles do have strategic purpose in modeling. The best modelers in the world know how to use triangles to control lighten, rigging, and stay in under the poly count. Depending on your art style, triangles may actually even be necessary to achieve the look. For example, if you are modeling anime-style shading in order to replicate the shadows correctly, it's often super useful to guide the shadows with triangles. Sometimes they help the weight painting process and prevent unwanted parts of the model from looking deformed when animating. For example, I'm pretty sure that the triangle here is to accentuate the outline of her leg. Because I noticed on my model that without that line there, it breaks the leg of the shape when bending up. But the most common reason is it can hugely reduce the poly. Especially if you know that most of the lightening shading is going to be done artificially on your texture map. This is actually the secret to the League of Legends art style. Almost all of the detail is a texture map, which means that any weird topology that the rendering engine would have shaded probably won't ever be seen because the texture map has a built-in ambient occlusion map that dominates the shadows. So they get to use all the triangles they want to save poly count and you never notice it, which is how the models look so good even when the poly count is insanely low. Like, you could have made her claws quads, I guess. Then you would have had to add a lot more poly in order to keep everything consistent and aligned up with the quads, but why would you? When it looks great with tries, keeps the poly count low, but most importantly, probably have zero effect on the player experience. And even when you're not trying to keep the poly count low, like in Dead or Alive, where the priority of the game is for the girls to look and animate as beautiful as possible, guess what we find when we transition from a low poly area like legs to a high poly area like her ass. That's right. Strategically placed power move triangles because it's useful. It keeps your topology's shape and connects everything just fine. And I'd be willing to bet my life that nobody complained about the triangles when the game came out. So to clear things up with my topology and the reason why you see so many tries in my tutorials is because I took this concept to the extreme. I wanted to get the smoothest weight painting possible with the lowest poly count possible. Because at the time she was created, weight painting was the series we were on. And I had to work fast. So for me, if I could delete or merge a vertex and not notice any visual difference when weight painting and animation, then I took it out. Now keeping the poly count low is not nearly as important for me anymore. So next year, I'll actually be going through the process of making a more traditional quad oriented topology version of Blenda. I just haven't had time to do it in the middle of uploading tutorials. Which brings me to my final point. If you are a beginner, I highly recommend that you just focus on getting the models basic shape done and then fixing the topology later because you can really fix it at any time. It's best to fix it before the rigging process but sometimes that's not an option and it's okay. Because the truth is the main topology process is usually a separate thing from the model in process. Especially if you are sculptor. And generally, if you are professional or striving to be a professional, you would usually have tools that do most of the work for you. I don't retapologize in Blenda. That's actually one of the few things I still do in Maya. Because I did the math. And if you are spending more than three hours a month retapologizing your character, you are actually wasted money. Because three hours a month, working any minimum wage job in the US is enough to pay for the indie version of Maya. Or you can get the student version for free which automatically does all the retapologizing for you. Like here. I'll show you why it's a waste of time to retopo your own stuff. In Maya, you can feed it any object you want. You could have the shittiest topology in the world. It really doesn't matter. And when you finished modeling the shape, you literally type the words remesh, give it a second, and then type in the words retopo, give it another second, and bam, you're done. Topology completed. Oh, it was 2,000 faces too much for you. You wanted 960 instead. Sure thing, 960 faces done. Oh, what's that? You changed your mind? You really only wanted 400 faces? Not a problem, done. This is why you as the modeler should really just focus on the shape. Because the software is supposed to handle the topology. You as the artist should be spending most of your time designing the shape of your art. Not worrying about whether it's triangles or quads. You work at McDonald's for three hours a month. And you can retapologize pretty much anything automatically. That's why I don't waste my time doing it. And that's why I don't recommend using your time to do it either. If you're really serious about modeling, you might change a few things here and there, but it's usually going to be automatic. Long story short, just look at the people who make the shit you like. If they don't use triangles, and you're trying to emulate their style, okay. Then maybe you shouldn't use triangles either. But if they do use triangles, then try to notice when they use them. Think about why? Because that's probably when you should use them. But just don't get hung up on it. Because listen. If you haven't retapologized your models yet, but your players are loving your game or your animation or whatever, that is the most important thing. Are people happy with your work? Does it look good for the audience that it's made for? At the end of the day, that's really the only thing that should ever matter. So seriously, relax, you're fine. Don't worry if you suck at topology. There's a lot of tools out there to do it automatically for you. If you don't like Maya, there's a lot of other tools you can use to do it too. Either way, nope, that clears things up. And maybe makes you feel better. If you enjoyed this video, please don't forget to ring that bell. It's the only way you'll know when I upload new stuff. Hope you have a fantastic day. And I'll see you around.