Tank Factory

[Autocon]

yes

[kcbanner]

The reason for this is how real-time rendering works. Graphics cards can only render polys with 4 sides or lower. Max supports "n-gons" for the artistic side of things, but when it comes to actually getting something in a realtime engine you have to deal with them.

Blender doesn't really support n-gons which is kinda nice actually.

[Xoliul]

Actually the only thing a graphics card works with at its core level is tri's.

[Kaskad]

And any n-gons will get triangulated once you get them into the game anyway so unless they're concave it's not a big deal

[Docm30]

Originally Posted by Kaskad

And any n-gons will get triangulated once you get them into the game anyway so unless they're concave it's not a big deal

Except that model exporters usually do a terrible job of triangulating models, so it's best to do it by hand.

[fabiodan]

JudgeMagister & tesher07: There is no problem whatsoever in intersecting cylinders like that, at least in performance. The real problem comes when you have to UV those cylinders. They'll end up wasting more UV space than you'd like.

Tesher, keep working on this model. Correct ngons or not, it's your choice. Yet I recommend you to keep the model with the ngons so that you know when they can be your best friends and your worst enemies.

Also check this out to make your wireframe render look right, also see the second reply to the thread, from Baida, which describes a different method that might be easier for you.
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/tutorials/6211-creating-wireframe-renders-using-3d-max.html

[tesher07]

Thanks for the wireframe tutorial, the one I had used was

3D Studio Max tutorial - Rendering an object in solid and wireframe

[Kaskad]

Originally Posted by Docm30

Except that model exporters usually do a terrible job of triangulating models, so it's best to do it by hand.

Yeah, that's why I said "unless they're concave." A flat convex n-gon cannot possibly be ruined by even the worst possible triangulation pass.