well.. no.. the only program which i have been in that actually said faces was polygons was milkshape 3d.
3ds max doesnt draw differences between them (although there is a triangulate button, that turns it all to triangles, very usefull)
lets say this: we usually use 4sided polygons as our workflow, and the finished product is usually in quads, but then we export it, THEN it becomes triangulated
to me it only makes sense to call polygons = 4 sided.
Quote: "Then I could say that the whole model is only one giant polygon."
no, because according to that site you would be talking about what we call N gon, a polygon having more than 4 sides, and if our polygon would only be build from vertexes... well it wouldnt be able to draw any lines to were the polygons ends... here a picture:
the left cube is a whole cube, in the middle one 2 of the lines have been removed, so now we have a big N gon of 6 sides in the middle, and it doesnt know how to render it, therefore trying to render it the best it can, but it just becomes one big mess. and to the right we have a wireframe of how it looks, now comparing the wireframe to the middle picture it doesnt make any sense.
now if i were to remove to the two lines left on the upside, then we would have a flat 2sided surfice. It would try to render the upper polygon and the lower one, even though the upper doesnt exist anymore.
hence why Ngons sometimes are to be removed: they look awkward at times: at flat surfaces they work.
and this is why a whole model cannot be a full Ngon basicly: i could go deeper in the matter but i believe my point has gotten through.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygon
the figure on the right would be a complete mess, however the figure next to it could actually be rendered: unless we mess with the Z axis: then it would start to render out oddly.
and for the record, I am a man.
