ILM Hard Surface Modeler Posts a Visual Guide That Shows the Differences Between Concept and Production Topology in 3D Models

Ever Wonder What The Differences Are Between a Concept and Production Mesh? Small details can change based on needs, but there are clearly a base set of rules for creating production topology. Trying to conform the mesh to using quads, strengthen edges, limiting poles, banishing n-gons and reducing poles have long been the hard and fast rules for any type of modeling, organic and hard surface modeling inclusive.

[pullquote align=”right”]The biggest difference between a concept and proaction mesh is how clean the production mesh is and how fast the concept mesh is.[/pullquote]

What does that look like though? If you are like me, you can glean more from an image than from the words. Looking at the wires from a production model can speak volumes about context, process and certainly answer a lot of questions.

Andrew Hodgson is a Hard Surface Modeler at ILM who has put together a quick visual guide that shows and contrasts the differences between the topology of sick concept models and production ready meshes.

“I received a lot of questions asking what i would do differently and why it matters.” Andrew says. “So i took a few pieces of my aircraft and rebuilt them to illustrate the difference between a concept mesh and a sub-d production mesh (for film).”

Making a usable production ready mesh might be seen as tedium by some, but there is something completely satisfying to bringing measured order to a model’s wires. Visit Andrew Hodgson’s ArtStation page to see more.