Topology is the geometric structure of a polygonal mesh. It is the layout of the edges and vertices which define the shape of a mesh. A particular shape can be represented by many different topologies.
Mesh topolgy can never be considered without context. It is necessary to consider how a mesh will be used and modified in the future in order to say anything true about the suitability of its topology.
There are no hard rules when it comes to topology. Some people will say n-gons (polygons with more than 4 sides) are always bad. Some will say triangles are always bad. Some will say that non-manifold geometry is always bad, or that meshes with holes in them are always bad.
None of these are true, because mesh topology serves a purpose, or multiple purposes. It is not a goal in and of itself. If the purpose(s) is/are served by some particular topology, then that topology is good, whether or not it is itself aesthetically and technically appealing.
Often users are advised to avoid triangles or ngons when building topology--to keep to quads. This is good practice, because quads are easier to work with, easier to edit, easier to create UV projections for, they subdivide more predictably, and, most importantly, easier to produce aesthetically appealing deformations from.
However. If a mesh will not need to deform, then there is far less pressure to keep to quads. If the mesh will not be subdivided, even less. If the shape is well-represented by the topology, and it either already has a good UV projection or will not be needing one, then quads and ngons don't matter, unless the mesh will be altered in the future.
It is much harder to modify a mesh which isn't quads than one which is. Especially if you want to alter topology. However, altering shape, to a small extent, usually is not sensitive to topology. It's also generally easier to do UV projection and alteration of quad topology than triangle/ngon topology.
It is still important to point out that having SOME non-quad (especially triangles) in your deforming, high performance mesh which may be altered and have UVs applied, is still just fine in many circumstances. If the trangle won't interfere with these things--then it DOES NOT MATTER and you should spend time on other things. Same with n-gons, although those have a higher chance of causing technical issues.
Regarding non-manifold geometry: it is generally a bad thing. Many, MANY operations and programs will not function correctly when passed non-manifold meshes. However, if your mesh is serving all your purposes, and you don't see those purposes changing, then non-manifold geometry doesn't matter. The circumstances where this might be true, however, are extremely rare, and it is best to avoid it.
Regarding holes in the mesh: again, context matters. Some advanced simulation or mesh operations require "watertight" meshes. Most don't, and it doesn't matter. Context and circumstance will dictate what's appropriate.
Mesh weight matters, as well. There's generally not much call for more geometric detail than your mesh needs to create the shapes you need, either statically or deformed, and it is best to keep poly counts as low as possible while not compromising on these things. However, this must be balanced with the effort it requires to reduce detail. If you have a poly budget of 100k triangles for an object, and it's 50k but a lot of those are not necessary, it's still not worth the time to reduce it further. People hours are worth more than computer hours.
Where topology really starts to matter a lot is in efficient hard surface modeling, especially where the asset will be subdivided. Not having your edge flows follow surface details will make life difficult, and having too much mesh detail will make modification increasingly difficult.
The point here is that every situation is different, and no real determination of acceptable mesh topology can be made without all this context. If you look at an image of a mesh and don't know anything about what it will be used for or how it might be modified, you can't say anything true about the quality of topology. These and other questions must have answers, in order to judge *overall* topology:
These questions must have answers in order to come up with useful conclusions about how good the topology is or is not. And again, there are no hard rules. Topology is not a goal, it is a tool to help reach other goals. If a triangle doesn't affect those goals, there's no point spending energy removing it.
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Original post:
This thread will be a clearinghouse for information about topology, both in general, and specific to Maya. It will be heavily curated and updated as I encounter more/better information on the subject.
Eventually it will be turned into another wiki and be the redirect for the majority of topology threads we get here, in order to avoid repetition.
If you are a subject matter expert, please post images, videos, links, or your thoughts here. Feel free to copy parts of old comments or posts you have made.
Hey All, Showcasing, Water Sim tools for maya 2023 and onwards its called ForgeFX and it can do all rbd, fluid, smoke and fire and anything you can think of, I am currently still working on it
Rendered it with renderforge I am still looking for testers to test the render engine
r/Maya • u/Sea-Ebb2838 • 5h ago
I'm going crazy, I'm trying to orient the joints of my arm and the orient joint button just messes things more and more instead of fixing, I don't know what I'm doing wrong, is the first time I try to rig something, someone please help me
Images for you guys see the type of shit this button is doing
I've been following this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUXEz01b20I&list=PLwxLUWVIZu5l2ULLZNdWpskQ2TAYD7kPY&index=2 if it helps somehow
r/Maya • u/AmarildoJr • 3h ago
What would be a solution to a camera attached to a motion path that needs to look straight down at the end, but is flipping?
Thanks
r/Maya • u/HarambeDaddy420 • 17h ago
This is one of my first solo models, don’t go too harsh on me lol, but i am very welcome to constructive criticism
r/Maya • u/InsanelyRandomDude • 8h ago
(1) is the render. As you can see, the pastry is basically white because SSS seems to affecting it completely. (2) shows a screenshot from Substance Painter where I painted the corners with white and the remaining black and exported the basecolor map and I'm using it as a Subsurface Weight map for aistandardsurface material. But that doesn't seem to working. I tried working with SSS in substance painter and I had similar issues which is why I decided to figure it out in Maya but that didn't work out. What do I do here?
r/Maya • u/Ok_Western_241 • 23h ago
I have been working on this for about 2 months with the hope of showcasing it at the end of the October, I did not expect that Bioware would be shutdown and Mass effect shelved but well all I can do is move with it. it will be released soon so expect it then
r/Maya • u/RelevantCoconut2457 • 10h ago
I am currently using Maya Creative on trail basis. I downloaded this paid rig and it deforms at the mouth area. I am a beginner at Maya and i have no idea how to fix. I've reached out the the seller of this rig. This deforming also happens with other rigs i download so i have a feeling it must be something up with my maya? I used a waitress rig using the full version of maya but since opening the waitress rig in maya creative, it deforms as well. Any help would be appreciated!
r/Maya • u/Environmental_Hunt_9 • 1d ago
Like the title says, the feet deep down with the body. They are rigged with an IK handle from the top of the leg to the heel. Any and all help is greatly appreciated
r/Maya • u/Bruhtato420 • 21h ago
Hello. This morning I woke up to work on a project for a school assignment and I was working on it just fine, but when I tried to save the project it gave me a sort of one drive error and told me to restart my laptop. When I did, and tried to open Maya again, it gave me a message about a new default menu set and I clicked update. Then when the file opened it simply said "file type not recognized" and everything is gone. I have lost essentially 2 days worth of work as my most recent back up is to 2 days ago. Is there anyway to get the file back? Or atleast get to a more recent version? This assignment is due tomorrow in the morning.
r/Maya • u/akbrodey1 • 1d ago
I want to make the legs shorter in these red areas. How can I do this without having to redo the rig. Also, the model already has UVs and textures as well, is there a way I can also preserve this?
Thank you!
r/Maya • u/Straight-Ease-9807 • 17h ago
Hi everyone! HP Art Toolset has just released an MCP integration that allows AI to use our rigging tools through dedicated skills and APIs.
AI can automatically place guides, validate them, and build a complete rig following our structured workflow.
In this video, we tested it on an existing character. AI handled 100% of the process with just 2 simple prompts.
The entire process took around 30–40 minutes, including full-body and facial rigging with animation controls.
Fully automated rigging is becoming a reality. We just need to review the results.
What do you think?
r/Maya • u/LoupDePluie • 1d ago
Hi , im rigging this overweight character , and wanted to try having the best deformations possible without blendshape, for now I made a joint and nodes based corrective that helps when the character back/spine bends , but , I made it with remap values, and it only activates when the back bends.
I would like to , either make this setup work for when the legs bends as well (maybe with distance tool ??? ), or , add another corrective just for the legs
I would like to make the right/left part of the belly skin move when the right or left leg raises , but im not sure how to link these two behaviors, nodes ? expression ?
im relatively new to joint based correctives and really dont know anything about scripting.
thanks yall !
r/Maya • u/MissionLoan5376 • 2d ago
The first image is from Marvelous Designer but I'm using Maya primarily to create all the weapons, trims, and all solid objects. Then I will bring them in MD to design my outfit. I will then take everything back into Maya to cleanup the fabric, detail the other models and off to Zbrush.
Please visit my Artstation post and follow me on Artstation to see the progress when I post them
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ayy8R0
r/Maya • u/Straight-Ease-9807 • 2d ago
What tools do you use to transfer meshes between characters?
This tool lets you do it directly in Maya, even with complex characters. Do you think this would make your workflow faster and more convenient?
r/Maya • u/cupid_lux • 1d ago
This is happening with all the leg joints that connect to the body, i have frozen all the transforms on the skin and the rig itself seems to be behaving properly
Hey everyone, I’m the creator of Eclipse Render Manager, and I’m excited to share it.
Here’s a quick look at it distributing render jobs across my own machines. Eclipse supports Maya alongside other DCCs.
This is just a quick introduction. There’s more to explore on the site, including features, full DCC and renderer compatibility, supported platforms, and step-by-step tutorials.
Try the beta for free at eclipserender.com.
Happy to answer questions here.
r/Maya • u/SonicCinema77 • 1d ago
Hey Maya Community
I have two models by Ramon Arango on Gumroad in the image that aren't showing up in my Arnold render. The female models that are showing use the same material tree. Does anyone know where to start investigating? Thanks in advance
Hi r/Maya. I've been building Inca, a free desktop 3D app that copies Maya 2020's interface: QWER, Alt-drag navigation, the Space hotbox, marking menus, the Channel Box, Graph Editor, Hypershade and MEL in the command line. It's meant for people who are learning from Maya tutorials but don't have a license: self-taught students, people whose student license ran out, or anyone between jobs.
It's not Maya and doesn't pretend to be. It can't open .ma/.mb files (OBJ, FBX and glTF work), and it's version 0.1. It isn't affiliated with Autodesk.
What I'd love from you: try a few things you do every day and tell me where it behaves differently. "In Maya, X does Y" bug reports are the most useful kind, and I usually fix them within a day.
Download (Windows / Mac / Linux): https://incacad.com Source (MIT): https://github.com/v3ai/inca
r/Maya • u/Agreeable-Cover-5014 • 2d ago
i'm doing the rigging for a short film and i'm using the model another teammate did, the rigging was successful but when i started skinning, for some reason i couldn't paint an area, when i exited the skinning settings, suddenly my mesh had a weird hole, it doesn't look like normal deleted geometry because it keeps appearing and disappearing if i click on another face
i tried importing a new mesh and copying the skin weight and that worked at first but then more holes appeared? is this is bug? or has this happened to someone else?
r/Maya • u/ScorchedSigil • 2d ago
So I was trying to look for the hotbar but no avail, can anyone find the hotbar for these images
r/Maya • u/Thivolan_Art • 3d ago
Tooth Wu Concept to 3d - Retopo, UVs and some posing/ modeling done in Maya. Full process videos and breakdowns coming up!
r/Maya • u/prabaartist • 2d ago
tangents do little to nothing or changes the trajectory of the ball! What do i do ?
