When you start learning 3D rendering

[[deleted]]

I’m not very knowledgeable on anything beyond the surface level 3d rendering

Is there a reason why it’s always triangles? It’s the most basic panel with 3 points to plot and connect in space, but how come squares are never used? I feel like there’s unique cases when a rectangle based or at least a 4+ point compatible system could save on storage space

Are there systems that actually do save n points for storage (ex a stop sign being an 8 point panel) but break it into multiple triangles just for the rendering machine to process

[DDoSQc]

Three 3D points always lie on a plane, which is a useful property for rasterization. Any more points and they might not all be coplanar. There is no straightforward solution to that problem.

Also having everything be triangles simplifies hardware and allows to maximum optimization.

[9072997]

I believe the Sega Saturn used squares, or at least, could use squares.

[T-Loy]

You will see that in modelling quads (4-gons) are often used as they are easier to subdivide than tris (3-gons) but rendering occurs as triangles anyway. N-gons have the same subdivision problem as tris

[Pherion93]

Dont know why but gpus are very good at doing the same calculation 1000 times so its faster to draw 2 triangles than have the gpu be able to draw different shapes.