Polygon by Polygon

This workflow involves creating an object polygon by polygon. The use of reference images during this process is incredibly helpful, sometimes necessary. This can be extremely slow and tedious when trying to create organic creatures and characters. This is because each polygon, edge, or vertex (The point where an edge intersects) is manipulated individually. Each new polygon can be created from extrude operations, or by slicing edges in to existing polygons. There are actually two different techniques to this process, box modeling and polygon by polygon. Box modeling involves starting with a box and cutting more edges to refine the form. Polygon by polygon involves manually adding each polygon. Both techniques are often combined.

Careful consideration needs to be taken when polygonal modeling to create a good topology. This means that the polygons need to flow with the shape they are trying to represent. For the shape of a box, the edge of a polygon should be placed at the edge, not cutting across it. Or for a face, edges should flow around the eyes in a circular fashion. This may seem trivial, but can pose many problems and interrupt the creative process.

Polygonal modeling is not the best choice for modeling organic characters. It is a great choice however for creating simple objects, and complex buildings. This is because a lot of man-man objects are built using squares, which are easy to recreate using polygons!