Low poly

Faceted low-polygon geometry with flat per-face shading and hard edges — simplified blocky forms, no smoothing and no texture maps.

It is one of 18 visual styles for Hermoso’s narrated explainer videos, and like every style except the photoreal default it is strictly non-photorealistic by design.

When to pick it

Abstract and conceptual subjects where you want dimensionality without realism. Clean, modern, and deliberately synthetic.

Channel defaults

No channel defaults to this style, so it is an explicit pick. That is not a demotion — a named style always outranks a channel default, and every style in the catalog is valid on every channel.

The style at a glance

• Register — non-photoreal.
• Summary — Faceted low-polygon geometry with flat shading — clean, modern, abstract.
• Style id — low_poly.

How a style is held across a whole film

A narrated explainer is not one render — it is dozens of frames, roughly one every second and a half, cut together so the motion is the edit rather than a fake zoom over a still. Holding one look across that many frames is the hard part, and the pipeline does it by rendering a single style key image first and locking every later frame to it, plus a continuity sheet that carries the recurring subjects.

The style is also separate from the channel — explainer, history, kids, or fairy tale — which sets the pacing, the narration register and the story grammar. A channel supplies a default look; naming a style always overrides it. An unrecognised style is refused by name rather than silently swapped for the default, because silently shipping the wrong picture under the right name is worse than an error.

What does it give you that photoreal 3D does not?

Dimensionality without the implication of realism. Flat per-face shading and hard edges with no texture maps read as deliberately synthetic, which suits abstract and conceptual subjects that a photoreal render would overstate.

The other explainer styles

• Stylised 3D — Chunky toy-like 3D with matte clay-render surfaces — playful, never photoreal.
• Fluffy toy — Soft felted-plush characters and props — the warm, tactile look for kids topics.
• Studio 3D — Preschool toy 3D — chunky glossy characters with big cartoon eyes on a clean white sweep.
• Watercolor chronicle — Loose watercolour washes on cold-press paper — soft, historical, hand-painted.
• Mannequin reenactment — Clay-render mannequin reenactment — smooth featureless figures in solid role colors acting out history.
• Pixel art — Chunky 16-bit pixel scenes on a limited palette.

All 18 are listed on the explainer style index.