So, why did quad rendering die?

>>3435119
I'm the least qualified person to speak on this matter (I know next to nothing about to 3D) but it's said that Sega's reason for rendering with quads was performance related. Less polygons, less hardware strain, and looked just as good as the competition.

Triangles won in the end because of how much straight forward the modeling process is with them. Feel free to correct me.

No idea but the visuals of those early 3D Sega games us something really unique that I feel has been lost.

>>3435142
>tris
>straight forward
Bitch please, you model with quads first and then convert to tris. Quad modelling would only be one less stop. Trying to model with tris only is nightmare fuel.

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>>3435152
Alright fuck nigga, just point me in the right direction

I want to know more about modeling and how to do it properly.

>>3435162
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY6KPrc4uMw

>>3435167
Well thanks. Just imagine, I could watch these and follow them everyday and I'd learn how to do something new.

I took a 3D modeling class at uni but we used something proprietary called Strata. The teacher promised he would teach us Blender but this old fucker never got around to it.

>>3435175
Your teacher was a cunt, I've never even heard of that program. There are 3 big 3d modelling tools in use for games:

3DS Max
Maya
Blender

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgZpeq2wj94

Here's something to aspire to.

>>3435167
Thanks, I've been wanting to learn (more than the basics I know).

>>3435152
But from a rendering point of view, triangles are simpler. They're inherently planar too so no problem there.

>>3435234
Yeah, which is why triangles won.

>>3435238
That's what I'm saying.

>>3435142
>>3435152
>>3435234
>>3435238
>>3435243
>people have gone on for decades about "HURR DURR POLYBIUS IS REAL"
>there's actually been a real Triangle Wars all along
Woah...

Triangles won because all professional 3d rendering used that.

It was also less wasteful and easier to texture.

fun fact: Nvidia originally did support not only quads, but 9-point quads. You could take a 4-point quad and add extra coordinates to all the half-points of each edge, plus the middle of the quad. Then the card would draw them curved according to those coordinates.

>>3435142
>it's said that Sega's reason for rendering with quads was performance related. Less polygons, less hardware strain, and looked just as good as the competition.

I think they went that direction with the Saturn because you could very easily modify their powerful sprite hardware pushers to be able to draw 4-point transformed quads, which are suitable for 3d graphics. Maybe they already had that in the System32 to begin with, meaning they wouldn't even need to add anything to it, just put it in a console package.

The advantage of this being that they don't have to rewire the entire chip to add support for triangle rasterization, which would've meant cutting and redoing a huge part of it.

Real problem with the Saturn wasn't Quads anyway, but the fact that it was SLOW at drawing anything, and you couldn't mix transparent polygons with backgrounds.

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>>3435175
>Take 3D modeling in college.
>Spend half the semiester learning about modeling programs.
>Final is just to create a nice 3D model with a few frames of animation.

>Compile mine with GMAX and export it to Quake 1 because I didn't pay attention at all and that's the only way I know how to work.

>>3435167
Blender pisses me off, because it's so unsuitable for working with schematics. It doesn't have lossless arithmetic or constraint solvers or any other essential CAD features.

>>3438194
>blender
>CAD

>>3438196
How else would you model buildings, vehicles or any other manufactured things?

>>3438194
>>3438197
http://www.freecadweb.org/
You're an idiot for using Blender as a CAD program. CAD is the one thing Blender was never intended to do.

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>>3435468
>9 point quads
Wouldn't that just be a collection of triangles?

Like this?

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>>3435412

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>>3438268
No, it's more like NURBS. The quad itself is 4 point, but you have 5 control points (one between each corner, and one in the center).

>>3438217
I had to use qcad at work to design a winebox with fingerjoints.

I don't know shit about qcad, and it's apparently the "advanced" program used by people who are good with autocad. Never touching that shit again.

>>3435152
>you model with quads first and then convert to tris
wat

>>3439090
He's not wrong.

It's not impossible to start with tris, but most modelers start with quads.

Quads are easier to texture and subdivide.

>>3440603
why would you want to subdivide them?

>>3440607

Probably a technique used by surface modeling software.

>>3440695
I thought we're talking about realtime rendering (OP even uses the word "rendering"). Quads and more complex objects are used in modeling all the time

>>3435119
What >>3435468 said.

First (consumer) 3D game software and hardware didn't have a z-buffer and drew a complete polygon at a time. You had to provide them in proper order, handle transparent objects, and calculate visibility in your engine. With that, it made sense to take a rectangular texture that can be moved and stretched (a sprite) and add horizontal and vertical tilts before placing it on screen with automatic calculation of all parameters in hardware, thus having a 3D engine. Other systems drew triangle polygons the same way.

Then general purpose rasterizers with z-buffer became the norm, they allowed to draw anything, and had a perspective correction. Triangles were used as a basic polygon because converting everything else to them is straightforward.

Many games and tools use quads-based internal data formats for models and environment where that makes sense.

>>3442634
wow, absolutely everything in that post is wrong. Impressive

>>3435412
Polybius probably is real, but not the actual game. It was most likely another game that got removed.

>>3442656
Polybius was tempest. Although it is possible that in the early 80s there were so many arcade games that one came out that made people sick or fucked up if they played it too long, as Tempest did to some kids, it's unlikely it would have been such a small localized event. But it's possible.

>>3442656
>>3442662

if you're interested in the Polybius mythos I recommend watching The Bishop of Battle from Nightmares
it's got a lot of the same themes going on

>>3435162
>>3435191
There's a whole board for 3D art, including modelling.
>>>/3/
(It's pretty slow).

>>3442676
slower than /vr/?

>>3443004
This board really isn't that slow. In fact it's got the perfect pace, make a post then go play some games and come back to a few more.

>>3443004
/vr/ is like, medium to mildly fast, compared to some of the boards I browse.

On /diy/ I usually only check once every 2 weeks.

>>3438197
>>3438194
you clearly don't know the difference between CAD and poly modeling. you are asking why does my screwdriver isn't suitable for painting my walls.

>>3435119
DS & 3DS had quads/sprites (123,000 triangles, 346,000 quads/sprites for the DS' A-PPU as the B-PPU is the same as the GBA's PPU but at as higher res & higher color pallet) due to low CPU intake so they never died (as well as the reason why the DS took so like to die off)

Modern day GPUs also have them as well for retro style games/lower CPU intakes as well.

In short, quads render per second when triangles render per frame hence a 60% boost for the CPU.

>>3443947
>Modern day GPUs also have them

Nope. There is a thing called Direct2D, but I'm fairly sure that for modern GPUs it is way easier to just break down such a thing to two tris.

>>3443963
No, sprites are much easier to work with.

>>3443981
What I meant is that the gpus break them down to tris internally.

>>3443993
Sprites take up 60% less power then triangles at 60Hz.

>>3444002
>Sprites take up 60% less power then triangles at 60Hz.

No they don't. Stop making up bullshit.

>>3443963
>Modern GPUs
>Needing GPU acceleration for 2D in 2016

Why did some seemingly innocent replies get deleted from this thread?

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Because a quad that isn't flat has to be represented with two triangles anyway.

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I recall that glBegin(GL_QUADS);

was having different results on riva tnt32 and later on mine geforce FX 5200 (not sure if i recall model number correctly)

quads were transforming to triangles in different vertex order and some models broke, because I was rendering folded quads to make triangles

but still an awesome experience

I believe quad-rendering will return at some point at indie gamingdev hipsters will scout for more technology and saturn-lookalike titles

>>3438194
Oh, I've read the other responses, but why the fuck were you trying to use Blender for CAD in the first place?

Triangle rasterizing is simpler because they're always convex and planar, which means you can draw them and the interpolated values with simple algorithms like Bresenham's lines.

And you can split quads into triangles anyway.

>>3444007
If that were the case then the Saturn would of used triangles.

>>3445902
Saturn used quads because it had a Sega in-house arcade hardware, based on the System 32.

And the problem wasn't quads vs tris, it was the fact that the Saturn was slow at drawing either.

>>3445915
That and they only had to be rendered every second, rather then every frame.