I am trying to model my room for the final mesh modeling exercise. But I am running into problems that I feel should be simple to solve but I am hitting analysis paralysis.
To put it plainly:
I need to extrude the blue area. To do that I need the yellow edges. I don't want the yellow edges to run all the way around since it will run over the window in the back (purple), which should be an inset on the back face. At the same time, I need cuts at red and green, but they need to be at different heights (red higher up than green). I need these cuts because pink lines need to be moved along Y-axis to a certain angle. Purple X shows where there's supposed to be a door inset into the mesh, so if there's a loop cut going around the mesh, it's going to intersect this as well as the window.
All this would be easily fixed by just knife tooling the whole thing, but coming from the subdiv modeling chapter, it puts a really really bad taste in my mouth that I cannot figure out how to do all this with just quads. If I knife tool the yellow edges, then the top and bottom large face becomes a 5-sided ngon, and I cannot figure out how to turn it into a quad without turning some other quad into an ngon, or creating triangles within the face.
Side-note: I don't know if I am just insanely dumb, but the subdiv chapter was extremely hard to grasp. Like manipulating poles and turning ngons and triangles into quads just seems so impossible to me. When I have a weird shape that I need to simplify I just brain freeze and am completely clueless for hours, getting absolutely nowhere.
Hi QQhris , the room is not going to be using Subdiv, so you don't need to worry about NGons; there is absolutely no need for an all-Quad Mesh here.
In addition to the Knife Cut, you can H(ide) neighboring Faces and use CTRL+R, or Subdivide Edges where the cut needs to be:
Hey 
spikeyxxx
Thanks for answering. I don't know why but I have just gotten this idea stuck in my head that ngons are something to be avoided at all cost, and that good topology is always quad-based. I know that ngons technically aren't bad unless you are doing subdiv modeling (I watched the video on ngons and triangles), but whenever I look up information about it on google, I just get contradictory information from all over the place. Some people seem to be strictly puritan about using all quads, and I saw one guy state that it was the industry standard, so if you were applying for a job, you should definitely have all quad-based topology. Now, I don't know if he was specifically talking about subdiv in that case, but I don't believe all game assets are subdiv modelled? Maybe in today's world.
I would just like a definitive answer on the case: Should I worry all that much about ngons or am I overthinking it way too much? I primarily am looking to model for games, but will definitely also want to explore other hobby avenues such as animation, props, and archviz.
Hi tfsuper3d
Yeah, except the window inset would extend past the loop cut on the right of it. Also, there would need to be a cut on both the left and right face of the mesh.
I've watched the video linked by spikeyxxx and that + looking up a lot of information regarding the whole thing lead me to understand that ngons aren't really all that bad, it just comes down to how you use them. I no longer think it would be a bad idea for me to simply knife tool my way around the mesh I am making, even though it creates a bunch of ngons.
Thank you all!
