Stylized vs Low Poly vs Realistic: One Chair in Four Art Styles

Short answer: stylized is an art direction, low poly is a geometry budget, and realistic (photoreal) is a material and proportion standard. They answer different questions, so a model can be stylized and low poly at once. In our catalog a faceted stylized tavern chair has 992 triangles, a soft low-poly cafe chair has 356, a hard-surface stylized crew seat has 2,412 and a photoreal dining chair has 6,310 in its Realtime version. Style decides the look; the triangle count follows from it.

This guide compares one everyday object, a chair, across the four art styles we build in, then lamps and crates, using numbers from the live product pages of Saltlight Village, Hearth & Hollow, Kestrel Station and Linden House, checked in October 2026. For budgets by asset type, see How many triangles is low poly?

Art style is not a triangle count

A common shortcut is to treat "low poly" as a style and everything with more triangles as "realistic". That shortcut breaks as soon as you put real assets side by side. The table lists four chairs, one from each style, with the size and geometry stated on each product page.

Two things stand out. The faceted tavern chair carries almost three times the triangles of the soft low-poly cafe chair, yet both are low poly and both sit comfortably inside a low poly scene. And the photoreal chair ships in two geometry profiles, so the same design comes in at 25,990 or 6,310 triangles depending on whether you render stills or run it in real time. The style did not change between those two files; the budget did.

Our style vocabulary says this directly: faceted stylized is defined by intentional planar silhouettes and visible facets, and is kept separate from polygon budget. When you choose an art style for a game, choose the look, then set triangle budgets that the look and your target hardware can carry.

The four art styles, and what defines each

Each collection is assigned one style before any modelling starts, and every asset in it follows the same rules. Here is what each style means in practice.

Soft low-poly gradient

Chunky low poly forms, a single soft chamfer on the edges of man-made masses, faceted organics such as rocks and tree canopies, and all colour taken from one shared gradient atlas. In Saltlight that atlas is a 512 x 512 base-colour texture laid out as a 16 x 16 grid of 32 px vertical-gradient cells, with one roughness value and no metal. Because every asset reads its colour from the same small texture, a whole collection shares one material: Saltlight Village is 69 assets and 75,399 triangles on that one atlas, and Larkspur Farmstead is 67 assets and 90,748 triangles on its own. Our texture atlas guide shows how the cells map to a prop.

Faceted stylized

Planar silhouettes and visible facets are the point, not a side effect of a small budget. Hearth & Hollow, a lived-in fantasy tavern and the market square outside it, uses this style: the complete collection is 57 assets and 58,279 triangles on one shared palette material, plus two ready-made scenes, The Hollow Tavern and Market Square, built from the same assets with their own lights and cameras.

Hard-surface stylized

Manufactured forms with modelled panel seams, bevelled edges shaded smooth, colour-blocked paint and sparing emissive signals such as indicator lights. Kestrel Station, a research and cargo outpost on a frozen moon built to snap together, is made this way. Smooth-shaded bevels need more triangles than hard facets, so the profile is Realtime rather than low poly: the complete collection is 64 assets and 199,112 triangles, still on one shared palette material, with three ready-made scenes (Operations Deck, Cargo Bay and Landing Pad).

Photoreal

Physically plausible materials, reference dimensions and close-up surface detail. Linden House, a daylit contemporary home built to real metric standards, ships every asset in a Studio profile for renders and a Realtime profile for interactive use, with PBR texture maps instead of a shared palette. A Two-Seat Sofa is 238,944 triangles in Studio and 52,800 in Realtime, which shows how much of a photoreal budget goes into upholstery seams and cushion shape.

More objects across styles: lamps and crates

Chairs are not a special case. The same pattern holds for lights and containers.

Within the stylized and low poly rows, triangle counts overlap: a soft low-poly street lamp costs more than a faceted lantern, and a stack of produce crates costs more than a single slatted crate. What separates the styles is the shape language and the material model, not a fixed number. The photoreal lamp sits in a different range because its look depends on smooth curvature and texture detail that the stylized sets deliberately leave out.

How to choose an art style for your game

Pick the style with the questions below, in roughly this order. None of them is "how many triangles can I afford", because every style here can be built to a realtime budget.

• Setting and tone. A cosy village or island suits soft low-poly gradient forms; a medieval tavern suits faceted stylized; a station, vehicle bay or lab suits hard-surface stylized; an interior meant to look like a real home suits photoreal.
• Material workflow. Atlas and palette styles use one shared material per collection, so recolouring or swapping a palette is a single texture edit. Photoreal assets carry their own PBR texture maps per asset, which gives close-up surface detail and means more textures to manage.
• Scene totals, not single props. Look at the kit or collection total for the area the player sees at once. Saltlight Village is 75,399 triangles for 69 assets; Kestrel Station is 199,112 for 64. Both are game collections; they simply spend detail differently.
• Consistency across sources. The style you choose is also the rule every future asset must follow, whether you model it, buy it or generate it. A narrow, well-defined style is easier to keep consistent than a loose one.
• Camera distance. Stylized silhouettes read well at a distance and at small screen sizes. Photoreal detail pays off when the camera gets close.

Mixing styles in one scene: what to watch

Mixing is possible, but it is where projects most often start to look inconsistent. Three things break early.

• Material model. A flat gradient-atlas prop next to a fully textured PBR prop shows the difference immediately under the same lights. Keep stylized and photoreal assets in separate areas, or restyle one side.
• Edge treatment. Soft single-chamfer edges, hard facets and smooth-shaded bevels each catch light differently. Within one room, keep one edge language.
• Proportion. Stylized props often exaggerate thickness and silhouette; photoreal props follow reference dimensions. Compare sizes before mixing: the photoreal dining chair is 0.80 m tall, the faceted tavern chair 1.09 m.

All four collections share the same delivery conventions (metres, BLEND, GLB, FBX and OBJ files), so assets from different styles open at the right scale. That makes it easy to test a mix in a blockout before committing. For what else an asset needs before it drops into a level, see What makes a 3D model game-ready.

Common questions

Is low poly or high poly better?

Neither is better in general. Low poly keeps scene totals small and suits stylized looks; higher detail suits close-up and photoreal work. Our photoreal assets ship in two profiles: the Linden House chair is 25,990 triangles for stills and 6,310 for real time, so you can pick per use.

What are stylized graphics?

Graphics that follow deliberate art rules instead of copying reality: simplified or exaggerated shapes, controlled palettes and a consistent edge treatment. Soft low-poly gradient, faceted and hard-surface are all stylized; they differ in shape language and material model.

What does low poly style mean?

Strictly, low poly describes a small triangle budget, and the "low poly look" is a family of styles built on it: visible facets, flat or gradient colour, simple silhouettes. Our soft low-poly cafe chair is 356 triangles and our faceted tavern chair 992; both read as low poly.

Can a stylized model be high poly?

Yes. Hard-surface stylized assets use smooth-shaded bevels and modelled panel seams, which cost triangles: the Kestrel Station Cargo Crate is 2,428 triangles, more than twice the faceted Hearth & Hollow crate, while staying clearly stylized.