Artists usually prefer quads, but it really depends on what they're doing. It's also not unusual for them to willingly create a model of mostly quads with tris

Artists usually prefer quads, but it really depends on what they're doing. It's also not unusual for them to willingly create a model of mostly quads with tris in the mix at the same time. In the end, the representation of a quad in a 3D modelling editor doesn't really matter. Be it an actual quad or 2 tris. Because any sane artist wants every quad to have 1 normal vec, if they want 2 on a quad they will happily use 2 tris instead. It is a non issue. (btw I have done plenty of 3D art for games, I have also made my own vk renderer, I don't see a problem with using tris in the end, even if "visual quads" do de-clutter my work and do help reasoning about the flow of the model at hand)