Edge Flow Tips and Tricks


Tutorial written by Athey Moravetz 06-28-08

A fairly common problem I see people come across is their edge density. In one part of a mesh, you need more edges going around because it's a wider/larger area, but then higher up, it gets skinnier, and you don't need all those edges anymore. Here are a few ways to minimize the edge density while keeping your mesh clean and quaded (4-sided polys)
Okay, you should know this, but if you don't, Cut is your friend.
To keep things in quads, we'll be removing edges in pairs. Pick two edges you want to get rid of and connect between them.
Connect the verticies from the corners and remove the edges edges.
Need to remove another pair of edges? Do it all again.
And when you're done, you can smooth things out a bit by moving edges and verts around.
Well, that did reduce the edges a lot, but it doesn't really look all that great. So lets try it again. Same exact thing, but different location and order.
This time, lets put the long one above and the shorter one directly below it.
Remove the edges (make sure you are removing isolated verticies too) A quick and easy way to do this is select the edge and then hit Ctrl+Backspace. It will remove the edge as well as any isolated verts it leaves behind.
This one rounds out realy nicely.
Really good geometry for lumps and bumps. Works good for clothing foldes, knees, etc.
That's great, but what if I don't want to remove two edges? Just one!
To keep things quaded, you will always be dealing in pairs, but they don't always have to be paralelle. You can remove an edge vertically, and add one horizontally. This works nicely if you need to add detail in one direction, but need to remove an edge row in another direction.
Remove one row, add another, and connect the two with two edges inside a single face.
Then connect the verts between edges, and you've got 3 quads.

That's it! Hope it helps someone.