An overview of topology

In Chapter 2, Overview of Blender's Sculpting Workflows, we learned a little bit about topology. In the Creating dynamic topology with Dyntopo section of that chapter, we learned that Topology is a term we use to describe how all of the components (such as vertices, edges, and faces) of a mesh are interconnected. The topology of a model is not the same thing as the shape of the model. The positions of vertices, edges, and faces can move around and deform without changing the topology as long as none of the connecting edges are removed, rearranged, or added. For example, in the following diagram, we can observe two mesh objects with identical topology but different shapes:

Figure 5.1 – Two objects with the same topology but different shapes

In this example, the object on the left-hand side is made out of 16 quadrilaterals (quads). The topology of these quads forms a simple grid pattern. The object on the right-hand side has...