You should watch your vertex count. Vertexes are what take up memory not tris. And the vertex count varies quite a bit by how many edge splits you have. A low vertex-to-poly ratio is as sign of a clean model.
- well placed triangles help you keep control the flow and silhouette of your mesh. USE BOTH! - quads are easier to edit around, create loops and whatnot. USE BOTH! - your in engine vertex count (don't trust max or maya). triangle count gives you an idea, poly count is useless - everything becomes triangles in the end…
Zbrush has a unusual 3d context. It's not displaying polygons like any other program. So it complains because of that. The problem with any polygon that isn't a tri is that you have to convert to a triangle to display it. This doesn't matter if the polygon is planar but if you have a non-planar polygon it can have several…
The on-card vert count is the true evaluation of the mesh. It is a calculation of physical verts plus UV/smoothing/Mat ID vert breaks. There are scripts to view the actual vert count, or in a program like Marmoset Toolbag this is already calculated and accounted for in the vertex count display. I still can't believe how…