Adventures across the 3rd dimension

Trying to render the displacements in Eevee still crashes the software (even when I switch to Blender 3.0) and Cycles renders but produces a rather weird glow on the dragon that looks redder than I would like.
And yet...
The live, real-time image in the viewport looks really good!

I think I may just crank up the samples and do a screengrab of the viewport for the final pic instead of rendering.

For the millionth time I am trying to do a low poly face with good topology and for the millionth time it's turning into a confused mess.
How do you get the different edge loops to link together?
And why do I end up with awkwardly placed vertices that can only ever form triangles instead of the necessary quads?
Do I have to keep watching those same tutorial videos over and over again?
Will the relevant information eventually sink into my thick skull?


*gives up for the day*

Are you retopologizing or modelling from scratch?

If you are retopoing a sculpt, you could take a screenshot into a paint program and draw out the poly flow to work it out in advance. I'm pretty sure you will eventually end up with tri's somewhere, it's just a matter of placing them out of the way where it doesn't matter too much. Normally I put poly loops around the mouth and eyes first, then connect those up and fill in the gaps. 

Also but in a different way.

I was modelling from scratch by just extruding planes and I kept ending up with groups of five vertices. In the end I managed to fix the loops around the face but it then left me with a collection of bizarre narrow triangles in the transition from the chin/jaw to the neck that all looked so bad that it was funny.
I put it away at that point and will look at it again tomorrow once I've forgotten about the awful struggle.

When I was doing vrml, in the days of the dinosaurs... It was better to use triangles than quads... Because the 4 points might not be on the same plane and then the whole surface would get skewed and weird. I don't understand what's wrong with triangles at all, except for there potentially being twice as many of them... (and having few faces was good too...)

Triangles don't always deform very well after rigging, they can twist more easily which messes up the shading. Also you can't have clear edge loops with triangles which makes it more difficult to unwrap the UVs and also subdivision is much messier.
Most of the main models I've made on here are exclusively triangles as a result of Dyntopo sculpting and Blender throws quite a tantrum when I try to unwrap or subdivide them.

I got rid of two triangles!

Three more appeared somewhere else.