2 Different Sized Tubes Cross Section

I am picking up modeling again (using zmodeler2). I will then be exporting models to UE4.1 later once I’ve proven to myself I can sit down and model like I used too.

So I am making a go-kart. The frame of the kart is made of tubes and cylinders (all 20 sided). I am working on joining a tube and a cylinder at a 90 degree angle. The cylinder is smaller than the tube.
As you can see in the pictures below, the vertices and edges don’t line up to the tube. I started deleting the sides on the tube and then was going to model the polygons to attach the tube and the cylinder.


After asking on a forum, they said to just make the cylinder go into the side of the tube slightly. No need to remodel polygons or give myself a headache. As much as I like this simple solution, it doesn’t sit well with me.

So when I import my go-kart into UE4.1 (zmodeler2 -> 3DMax -> UE4.1) will I have issues with textures because one object collides into another? Will a jaggedy white line form at the seam of the 2 objects? If I want to potentially take my idea farther and make a real game, is this type of modelling poor practice?

TLDR:

  1. What is the standard practice when vertices and edges don’t line up.
  2. I’ve used UDK before, it wasn’t very good for object creation in my opinion, is UE4 better? Can it replace a 3D modelling program?

yeah, I would agree because if you were to merge the tubes into a solid mesh you would be increasing the poly/tri count by quite a lot witch when in game wouldn’t make any really noticeable difference to how your model looked but could lower performance of your game, it would also take a lot longer to finish the model. I have seen quite a few models that were ripped from AAA games and they were done the same way.

nope.

not as long as you texture the tubes properly.

not really, its a choice between having a few pixels of texture you cant see or 100’s maybe even 1000’s of extra poly’s/tri’s you don’t need (depending on how many tubes you would be merging).

that depends on the model, sometimes its better to merge them and sometimes its better to have them overlapping.

while it is technically possible to make objects in UE4 it cannot replace modelling software, you can make models faster/more optimized and better looking in modelling software .

hope that helps:)