Playtesting/Optimizing Models

So I've got the terrain working with a mix of an unreal terrain and static mesh for the underground.  Basically I used the terrain editor for the stuff above ground and then matched up the underground tunnel to the terrain.  So that was all of Wednesday night, and I mean all of it.  Then I started UVing the power plant, at some point I realized that I hadn't optimized my geometry yet...woohoo startover.  So that was all of Monday night...again, all of it.  I am optimizing the jail right now.

Model by Matt Williams

When triangulated manually, the models are much more efficient going into the engine.  The model on the left is a model of all quads that has been triangulated.  The reason I did this is because when you import the model into unreal, it triangulates it anyways.  So in the end, if I left it all quads in Maya, I would have a model in Unreal with 1020 tris, but when I triangulate it manually, I am left with 514 tris with no loss of detail.  In fact I added some windows on the left side, so it is half the polys with more detail.  Hoorayyyyyy.  While the one on the left may look neat and clean, its not efficient.  Optimization is to be done only after you are absolutely done modeling and before laying out UVs.  Its still a good idea to model in quads and then optimize.  Having some tris while you are modeling is alright, but I still try to avoid N-gons(faces with more than 4 faces) at all costs.

Although manually optimizing is time consuming, it is a necessary evil.