Why do we use polygons in video games?

Why do we use polygons in video games?

Polygons are used in computer graphics to compose images that are three-dimensional in appearance. This is quicker to display than a shaded model; thus the polygons are a stage in computer animation.

What is polygon in GPU?

To understand how a GPU draws polygons, first consider the data structure used to map a polygon. A polygon consists of a collection of points—known as vertices—and references. Vertices are often stored as arrays of values, such as those shown in Figure 1.

How many polygons can a GPU render?

You’ll find if you have a high end graphics card that you can display about 1 million polygons in real time. However, as you said, engines will not claim support so easily because real world scene data will cause a number of performance hogs that are unrelated to polygon count.

Why are triangles used in graphics?

Computer graphics uses flat triangles to approximate smooth surfaces, but if you’re willing to allow triangles to bend a bit, then you can build any surface by gluing enough of them together. This is equivalent to saying that you can cut any surface into curved triangular pieces.

Why do 3D graphics use polygons?

Because with a polygon, you can define points in space easily, create a planar surface with those points, and create a mesh with them. This is important data you’ll need to render an object. If you had enough polygons, you could approximate curves.

Are polygons still used in games?

Modern Polygon Graphics In modern times, polygon count is no longer even considered a serious problem in video game creation. Graphics technology has advanced to such a degree, that a single character in a game can use 150,000 or more, without much impact on the hardware.

Why are polygons used in 3D graphics?

In 3D computer graphics, polygonal modeling is an approach for modeling objects by representing or approximating their surfaces using polygon meshes. Polygonal modeling is well suited to scanline rendering and is therefore the method of choice for real-time computer graphics.

What are polygons used for?

In computer graphics, a polygon is a primitive used in modelling and rendering. They are defined in a database, containing arrays of vertices (the coordinates of the geometrical vertices, as well as other attributes of the polygon, such as color, shading and texture), connectivity information, and materials.

How many vertices can a GPU handle?

Less-common bottlenecks: The GPU has too many vertices to process. The number of vertices that is acceptable to ensure good performance depends on the GPU and the complexity of vertex shaders. Generally speaking, aim for no more than 100,000 vertices on mobile.

How many vertices can a computer handle?

Generally speaking, aim for no more than 100,000 vertices on mobile. A PC manages well even with several million vertices, but it is still good practice to keep this number as low as possible through optimization. The CPU has too many vertices to process.

Why do video games use Tris?

Because of this, drawing triangles is a lot simpler than drawing polygons of higher order; less things to deal with. This is why those triangles are so commonly used in computer graphics. Triangles have many properties that make them easier, and therefore faster, to draw.

Why do game engines use Tris?

Where the actual process of drawing the polygons is concerned, it’s always about triangles, as three points represents the simplest possible 3D shape. Thus, all of your quads are having a line inserted by the computer, bisecting them whichever way it thinks makes the most sense at the time.

What does polygon count mean in gaming?

Polygon Count. The two common measurements of a game model’s “cost” are polygon count and vertex count. Polygon is interchangeable with triangle in these measurements, as GPUs only see vertices and triangles, not 4+ sided polygons.

How many polygons does it take to make a game?

Polygon Count. Polygon is interchangeable with triangle in these measurements, as GPUs only see vertices and triangles, not 4+ sided polygons. Depending on the use, a game model may stretch anywhere from 2 triangles for a billboard, to 40,000+ triangles for a complex character.

Why do video games use triangles instead of polygons?

When a game artist talks about the poly count of a model, they really mean the triangle count. Games use triangles not polygons because most modern graphic hardware is built to accelerate the rendering of triangles. The polygon count that’s reported in a modeling app is always misleading, because the triangle count is higher.

Why does it take so long to make a 3-point polygon?

It takes a lot of calculations to make sure all the points are co-planar, thus all polygons that are greater than 3 points are pre-calculated by decimating them into triangles and tested to make sure all the points are co-planar once, instead of on every frame that gets rendered. Here is good reference about polygon meshes.