The complexity of a triangle

Triangles are mostly simple structures living simple lives. But sometimes you forget how complex they really are. A usable triangle for 3D graphics usually contains:

• 3 3D-vectors in space
• 3 3D-normals
• 3 2D-texture coordinates

To optimize, you can join some data together. Then you’ll end up with a vertex. Then your triangle will look like this:

• 3 vertices.

Where 1 vertex has:

• 1 3D-vector
• 1 3D-normal
• 1 2D-texture coordinate.

There is apparent savings there. But when joining them together in a mesh, you can save big on memory (and cache). All you need to describe a mesh, is with a list of vertices and a list of indices which forms triangles.

• List of vertices
• List of indices

And with this, you’re free to optimize the triangle structure more easily since there are no duplicate vertices.

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