Often, where you want to join two meshes (e.g. a hand to a wrist) they don't match up because joining edges / faces are not the same number for each part. This is where edgeloop "termination" comes into play. It is a simple trick to knock out edges from one part so that they two do match up, without creating the widely feared triangles as you do so.
Edgeloop Termination is one of those things that is pretty easy for those who have done it for a while, but devilishly hard when you are first learning. Here's a simple workflow to show you how to terminate two edges.
1. We want to get rid of the two lines shown here.
2. Start by making diagonal lines to draw our target edgeloops into the centre.
3. Delete the previous edge where the new merge is taking place.
4. Delete the remainder of the edgeloop.
5. Convert the middle triangles to a single quad.
6. Fill in any holes. You are done.
Okay, that's my simple edgelooping "trick" for now. There are other variations on the method. If I get time I will make another tutorial on these shortly, including a way of matching even and odd edges (the above only works in twos)... that will be a somewhat bigger tutorial.
For the meantime, I hope someone out there finds this useful. Please give feedback, vote etc if so.
