PROJECT 1: Applying the feedback

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I was very lucky to receive an amazing in-depth feedback almost immediately after I asked for it. The friend who gave it to me had some great points I forgot to take in mind when modeling and I feel like applying them really improved the topology at the end.

Main takeaways:
- Stitch head + chest, hands + jacket, leg guards + pants + belt and similar together, as it will be much easier to paint textures on a connected model
- When stitching things together and adding triangles to fit the topology of each piece, make sure to add the triangles on a less-visible part of the model if possible, e.g.: League models are viewed from top-down, therefore, add triangles to the bottom part of the belt when connecting it to the pants as any possible triangular artifacts will be hidden that way
Elements before stitching on the left, elements after stitching on the right. Triangles are kept on the bottom side of the belt.

- Always make sure the original model's pivot is on 0;0;0 and that the vertices which will connect symmetrically are perfectly lined-up to avoid brain-pain during rigging
Left: Pivot points all over the place, unorganised, adds more work than if I would keep them all 0;0;0 from the start. Right: All pivot points at 0;0;0 with model ready to UV and add symmetry to.
- If something doesn't want to reset to 0, reset XForm and try again

- Keep even polygons if possible, better for animation, looks better, just is better if they are square

- Especially with handpainted stuff, check Backface Cull on - many engines will have this activated to only show one side of a poly, and checking this on will prevent you from having accidentally transparent parts of model at the end
- As per previous point, also make sure to collapse or bridge backfacing polys which create holes and transparency

- Always keep in mind what topo you would like to see as a rigger. Working in loops is essential.
 

I've also finished adding smoothing groups to the model and re-designed the turbine/plane thingy to something with a more interesting shape.

I find that I'm learning so much from the project, mainly thanks to the great feedback which allows me to analyse my mistakes. I'll be moving to Unwrapping soon, with this great video as my guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srdy78-TY6Q 

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