koobas.hobune.stream
Why built-in Plane has so many tris?
A bit not typical question but it bugs me - why build in Plane object consists of so many triangles instead of just 2? Besides wasting GPU, what's the reason?
What bugs me is why the built in plane primitive has so few triangles. With GPUs being so powerful, I really wonder why anyone would make such a puny small asset. ;-)
The CreatePlane editor script form the Wiki allows you to specify the quads and orientation of a plane.
There's no "industry standard" for the number of triangles in a plane. The one in Unity just happens to be a 10x10 grid, so has 200 triangles. If you need a two-triangle quad, then either create one, use the GL.Quad primitive, or wait for 4.2 which will have a Quad game object to live alongside the plane, sphere, capsule, cylinder, etc. Note that when you do GameObject->Create Other all that happens behind the scenes is an empty game object gets created, and then a model is pulled out of some resources the editor has, and components are added to it. There's no magic.
Why would anyone think there's any magic? Or that anything other than what you wrote happens?
On a different note - yeeeeeah, launching a bigger- Unity-itself just to create something absolutely elementary in (probably) each project is definitely the way to go... Good to know that at least Unity is fixing this shortco$$anonymous$$g.
I don't entirely see how this is meant to be something that needs fixing.. If any of the default primitives are not to your liking then you can simply create your own reusable mesh assets.
Unity isn't a modelling program like blender or maya, it's just convenient to have default geometry that you can add to your scene without having to first create it.
The default plane mesh has more triangles than absolutely necessary, but it is useful for when you would like to create cloth simulations, etc.
"I don't entirely see how this is meant to be something that needs fixing.." -> " it's just convenient to have default geometry that you can add to your scene without having to first create it"
Also seems odd that cubes are 1x1x1, spheres are diameter 1, but planes are size 10x10. I assume because planes are typically used for large walls and floors, so new users find it easier. As Graham writes, everyone else will import their own planes.
It's kind of understood that the built-ins are just messing around assets. Even something as obvious as a cube gets replaced with a differently UV-mapped cube to make crates.
A typical messing-around use for planes is to test out vertex deformation shaders -- water and such. I'd say 11x11 verts is about the right size for that.
Planes being bigger (and hence having more quads) to suggest certain usages actually makes sense. Not that I agree with such motivation (I don't) but it makes sense. Also - without any tools in Unity Editor for vertex deformation anything with more than 1 quad just doesn't make sense. But I didn't think of shaders, so good catch there.
But I really can't agree with built-in things (assets, tools, blocks, whatever) being just for messing around - they should (and usually do) be the basic elements that one can build upon. Or use something ready ins$$anonymous$$d of wasting time creating the cube in a 3D editor...
Lots more people know modeling than Unity. $$anonymous$$aking custom basic shapes is no problem. In fact, they probably already have a bunch that work perfectly with Unity.
Spheres can be low-poly, higher-poly, made out of tris (isosphere) or quads. $$anonymous$$odelling programs are much better at making and unwrapping the dozens of types you might need. Some cubes are "die" unwrapped, so you can put a different image on each side. Others are given a bevel, which really should be custom made for different scales (or they stretch funny.)
You can get some approximation of spotlights/point lights when using vertex lighting on a plane that has many polygons.
