How to count polygons in Unity?

Question

The Rendering Stats (profiler) only shows tris and verts. But everyone keeps using the term polygon which doesn't exist in Unity's terminology.

How can I get the polycount of my Unity scene?

Answer 1

"tris" is short for "triangle" which in the context of 3d rendering is usually synonymous with "polygon".

According to mathematicians, polygons are two-dimensional shapes with any numbers of vertices (or 3 or more vertices, according to some definitions). And some 3d modeling tools even allow you to create polygons with more than 3 vertices. But when those get rendered by a 3d engine, any polygons with more than 3 vertices get broken up into triangles. This usually happens long before the geometry data gets to the rendering pipeline.

So when we are talking about "polygon count" in the context of 3d rendering, then what we actually mean is "triangle count". But "polygon" sounds way cooler, so the term sticks despite being slightly inaccurate.