Polys, Normals, and Tessellation

A simple visual showcasing the differences between rendering low poly geometry, normal mapping, normal map+tessellation, and a high poly model. Normals take care of lighting and shadows, but not silhouette. Tessellation smooths out the silhouette, but if you stick to low-poly normals and don't use a normal map, then the lighting might not smooth out the way you expect. But tessellation together with a normal map replicates a high-poly result to the tee. While it is a tiny bit more difficult to render as it uses a more complex pixel and vertex shader, it will still handle LODs much better than a high-res output and save thousands of polygons.