Character Design and Creation - Animating with Blender: How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish - page 68

Quads, Edge Loops, and Joints
Rule number one when modeling organic characters for animation: triangles are right out.
When working with animation in which armatures and other structures will be deforming your character's
mesh, everything simply works better with quads. You will almost certainly be using Subsurf modifi ers on
your models, too, which likewise produce better results with quads. If you've been modeling with triangles
exclusively, this may take some getting used to.
Figures 5.23 and 5.24 show the Beast with both triangles and quads. You wouldn't think it would make
much of a difference because quads are just two triangles with a concurrent edge, right? Figures 5.25 and
5.26 show a close-up of the Beast with his arm raised and the mesh structure with a subsurf modifi er in
place. The one using triangles (Figure 5.25) shows a repeating rosette-style pattern of faces and some ugly
glitches in the deformation. The deformation and subsurfi ng done with quads (Figure 5.26) maintain the
original mesh structure, only at a higher resolution.
Figures 5.23-5.24 The Beast model with both triangles and quads
Figures 525-5.26 The triangle and quad meshes deformed and subsurfaced