Every 3D model breaks down into three parts: vertices (points with a position), edges (a line between two vertices), and faces (the region an edge loop encloses). A face with three edges is a triangle; with four, a quad.
Real-time renderers — game engines, and the browser’s WebGL/three.js included — end up triangulating every face before drawing it, since the GPU only knows how to rasterize triangles. So modeling in quads isn’t about what the GPU wants; editing, subdividing, and animating quads is simply far more predictable for the artist.
Blender, Maya, and Cinema 4D all let the viewport switch between vertex/edge/face selection modes to edit at each level. This demo layers all three on one mesh at once — dots for vertices, lines for edges, a translucent fill for faces — so you can see how the layers actually stack.
When to use
Useful when a tool’s vertex/edge/face edit modes feel confusing, or when explaining why triangle count and triangulation matter.