Ngons and smoothing groups

Now I have finished my low poly model, I am going to go through and double check for Ngons and smoothing group errors so that my model is optimized for when I start my high poly model. As soon as I started checking for Ngons I found one straight away on the head.

Ngon on the side of the head.

To resolve the problem I used the "cut" tool and set the "snap" tool to "snap to vertex" and then cut between the vertex to fix the Ngon like so.

Using the "cut" tool to fix Ngons

I was lucky that this was the only Ngon on my robot model. So then I started on fixing the "smoothing groups" for my robot too give him some nice soft edges and some nice hard edges where applicable.

Fixing the smoothing groups on the head

Here's an example of how I've used smoothing groups to give the illusion of a curved surface on a hard surface model.

Before and after fixing smoothing groups.

Now that I have fixed the smoothing groups and spotted any Ngons that may mess up my model further into the project, all that is left to do is a quick "reset Xform" to make sure all is fine. Next I will move onto putting in some supporting edge loops, turbo smoothing and unwrapping my robot so that he is ready to put into zbrush or mudbox to add some surface detail.