Why video games are made of tiny triangles
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- čas přidán 9. 01. 2019
- Inside your favorite games - Red Dead Redemption 2, Fortnite, PUBG, Rocket League - you’ll find millions of tiny triangles.
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Games today are meticulously detailed. They’re mysterious and heartwarming, and colorful and stylized. And that makes them a technical challenge. Though computing power has skyrocketed, gamemakers keep competing to add more detail to their games, pushing the limits of what even the newest technology can compute. Game technology needs to constantly keep up with gamemakers’ creative ambitions.
Triangles are a key part of how these gorgeous, detailed games appear on your screen - the hidden heroes we should all thank as we play. This simple shape helps keep the number of computations needed for each detail as low as possible, allowing the player's computer to process these elaborate games.
Watch the video above to find out how triangles make room for creators to build the beautiful games that exist today.
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Cleo Abram hey you look like Keira Knightly !
you're really beautiful 😃❤
Hey... Your waist compared to your shoulder looks really slim. Just something i observed. Doesn't mean i wasn't focusing on video 😂
You guys all creepy... anyway great explanation in the video!
so is the earth made up of triangles
*CPU'S ARE JUST ROCKS WE TRICKED INTO THINKING*
This dude is on another level of being that we will never understand.
Implying the rocks are thinking
This comment is too good for a venue like CZcams
That's deep. We're just tissue tricked into thinking
Dont credit this guy for being original, because he isnt. Someone else made this quote up. I believe it was Terry Pratchett.
0:38 "But you never see them."
Well someone hasn't played Fallout 76...
Oof
Oof
Oof
Oof
Oof
vox: answering questions you never knew you had
Wis it a little shorter.
Well i have knew about this when im 12 m8
Lol
@@azzurirodrinata7646 you're such a badass
Azzuri Rodrinata Einstein over here
@@sweatysweak roblox
PS5: someone said... triangles?
i know dude 😂
∆
what???
@Crimson Epitaph what does the comment mean?
It's a tall fan
Who knew Keira Knightley knows a lot about games?
@@kahoot9659
Hear hear
Natalie Portman
"Not even their parents could tell them apart"
@@kahoot9659 You're right, it's Giada De Laurentiis.
@@kahoot9659 tomato tomato
Thank you tiny triangles, very cool.
Very cool and very legal
It not just triangle. Material. Rig. Etc
"You're gonna see the dust fly off" - all thanks to raymarching ..."Everything is made of triangles." 😒
lets all love lain
dani
This should be popular now after the UE5 reveal.
I came straight from the cherno
Recommended by the algorithm
Millions and millions of triangles
@@sunilgowda2056 Billions*
People should go watch the computerphile series
But this is only half the story. During the development process, everything in the video game is usually made of rectangles. However, at the end of the development, all the rectangles are converted to triangles. This is because it's much easier for game developers to work with rectangles, but it's easier for GPUs to work with triangles.
KunWoo Dodd In general this is true, but the word you’re looking for is ‘quad’, not ‘rectangle’
I am a pro 3d Artist for video games, this is half true, we basically do what ever is easier. Bothe Triangles and quads are used in development. It's usually about half and half.
naaaam n-gon ftw
@@donloder1 heresy
@@TheDanielLivingston Oh of course "quad" is the most correct term, but "rectangle" is more accessible to the average CZcams comment reader.
Here’s why video games are made from tiny triangles:
Lvl 1 : Squares
Lvl 100 : Triangles
*_That’s how shapes work_*
I literally see you everywhere, are you trying to be Justin Y?
thats how the mafia works
Gonna make you shape like that
Voxels ar level 300
Haha
How do you do, fellow gamers?
Justin Y.+ I’m in school gamer
KSP
gamers rise up
Nothing much, Just casually harassing minorities
Why do I see you everywhere?
Minecraft: No, I don't think I will
@Luc Bloom Minecraft uses polygons and not voxels for it's graphics, but it does remember terrain data in voxel form. It still gets rendered as polygons tho.
the minecraft are made by triangles to, i k it because im doing a 3d game on java, like minecraft
Minecraft uses triangles...
It's just a joke.
a triangle is half a square, so Minecraft is still just a bunch of triangles
**slaps ps5** This boy can fit in so many triangles!
And that's why NVIDIAs HQ is shaped like a triangle.
*NoVideo
r/AyyMD xd
TL;DR - We formed a pact with the Ancient Fey back in the 1960s and agreed to use their sacred triangular and square geometry in all of our national entertainment media in order to transform America into the world's largest leyline to await the next alignment of the planets in 2024.
hey its me jop
Thanks You.
For everyone who didn't watch the video, this pretty much sums it up!
Thank you.
Whew.
@Ali Jordan I'm glad you asked! Back in the 1960s, we formed a pact with the Ancient Fey and agreed to use their sacred triangular and square geometry in all of our national entertainment media in order to transform America into the world's largest leyline to await the next alignment of the planets in 2024.
Should also be mentioned that they make the models using squares then subdivide it into triangles. It's just way easier to thing spatially when dealing with squares and when you're all set you can just press a button to turn it into triangles.
I just watched a video of the Unreal Engine 5 for PS5 and came here to see why video games are made of tiny triangles.
It’s literally like in real life too 😂 the shape triangle is the strongest shape
@@andycornejo2361 It's also the most basic of the shapes. 3 sides is minimum that you need to enclose an area.
3:01 the singular of "vertices" is "vertex"
0:01 No, that is Arthur Morgan. He died at sunrise, that's why we have AM for morning hours.
Oh wow I never made that connection. Truly beautiful.
who is seeing this after that traingle video of unreal engine 5 demo😂
vox: put thousands of these or maybe even millions
me: oh shoot then the ps5 tech demo is more impressive
Mike Wazzup didn’t they mention in the tech demo that the 500 statues alone had several billions of triangles?
@@nimnadarajah6581 millions
@@RisenSlash trillions
How far into a new year is it acceptable to greet "Happy New Year!"?
Uptil 12am of the last day of the year !!!!
This far, plus 10 minutes
I think in France it's around the 7th of february xD
within 74 seconds after midnight
I say the 10th
i used to study games design but switched over to animation with a focus on 3d, the hardest part was switching over from triangles to my teachers telling me everything's gotta be quads.
love that you guys cover these kinda topics!
usually it doesnt matter if you modelling something for gaming or photorealistic 3d. you have to model with quads all the time
except you are talking about calculating those things in a program
@@overdev1993 sorry, mind explaining more? i remember in my games studios we'd use tris in a lot of our assets and environments, but my 3d teacher now is quite strict about no tris or n-gons. i don't know if these are just the preferences of my teachers though, I'm still just a beginner!
@@caramelcoffees game engine only can deal with tris. so you have to convert all the quad meshes to tris oder the engines does that automatically.
tris and ngons are just hard to model with atleast most of the time thats the only reason I think.
"But you never see them"
This girl is young.
Ha, fair.
Someone hasn't heard of low polygon games
What? How have you got it to say “read more”
@@MiloMcCarthyMusic CZcams is not perfect, nothing is, there are bound to be mistakes
Games are made of gamers
Hey ily
I thought u would have more replies than this, since ur channel is pretty big
Memtub same
BUT THINK ABOUT IT: *A BALL IN A VIDEO GAME IS ACTUALLY MADE OF TRIANGLE S*
And Music is made for magicans.
Illuminati confirmed.
Jackass
Pythagoras confirmed
(Plays the X-Files Theme.)
@@pequod4557 r/woooosh
Why did the console gamer crossed the road ?
To render the other end of the street
Lol
Hilarious and original
1997 called. He wants his joke back.
And They they render it tho
@@cerulean5299
No, it's not original. This joke is as old as it gets.
I mean if you play early tomb raiders you would know really well about triangles.
I'm very pleased to see behind the scenes of video games being shown in mainstream media such as Vox, but I'm a little disappointed in the execution. I would have loved to see you dig a little deeper than the video title, because that's pretty much all you said "video games are made of triangles", except with fancy Vox graphics. Don't really need to watch the rest of the video for that.
Nevertheless I'm very happy to see that there is mainstream interest in the making of process of video games nowadays.
0:51 *_t h a t ‘ s h o t_*
Gading Surdawi *yes*
Is this Natalie Portman‘s sister?!
Yes, Keira Knightley.
no I'm Natalie Portman's sister. AMA
@@BladeTheGabite joe mama
Curiously enough the Sega Saturn rendered everything in rectangles instead of triangles. This proved to be an issue(among many others) when porting games to the console because every other game was rendered using triangles. Most devs would just set the side of a rectangle to 0, effectively making it a triangle, however this was less than ideal.
That's cool to know!
Wow, really cool that you got someone as informed and knowledgeable as the head of engineering of unity! As always, really high quality and concise video! Sometimes wish these were longer.
Nice little easter egg is using the teapot to show the rendering.
:)
it's the wrong teapot though :( the Utah Teapot has a handle on the side!
“Meticulously detailed games”
>proceeds to state fortnite and pubg as examples
Finally we found someone smart!
@Kay
'Modern Disasters'? Aren't they some of the popular game's played by millions, I don't know much about gaming & it's history, can u eloborate?
Artstyle =/= Graphics
Pubg used to rule the world... good days
@Nefomemes too bad m8
Oh boy I’m scared of all the ps5 comments that are gonna come in
Beto
Have you heard that ps5 draws in 50 megafarts per terashit
Ireikes oh that’s nothing, I heard the Xbox one has 1gigashart per 10 terashit
Yay, saw they mentioned Monument Valley. That game (and its sequel) is so beautiful!
Yeah unreal engine 5 for PS 5 told me hundreds of billions triangle
I'm gonna make a game for the ps5 with only 3 triangles
Ser3rm 3 triangles is prob like a rock in a game😂
@@andycornejo2361 not even it would probably be smaller than a pixel
When Vox had a survey and asked what your audience wanted I said more games coverage as it's the biggest form of media now. To ignore games is to ignore modern culture. I didn't want plays or things like that but intelligent discussions about games.
Vox you delivered! I'm sure it wasn't because of my request but it feels like I had a small hand in it! So happy. Great video!
Triangles are now my most favorite shape
the 3 vs 4 dots thing just blew my mind
An equivalent concept is used elsewhere too. In 3D printing, CAD, 3D modelling etc, objects are treated in a similar manner. For example, during simulation of 3D models, we use FEA (Finite Element Analysis) to study them with respect to physics, engineering (and even economics)...
That is because a triangle is the SIMPLEST geometric shape that gives a completely closed contour/loop and or surface area. By simplest, I mean its the least number of points you can join to form a closed area.
Therefore, when you divide (or construct, in this case) an object with an extremely large (but still finite) number of triangular area elements, it becomes easier for a computer to understand it...
That’s what I was thinking. We had to do stuff with “meshes” in my heat transfer class using some fancy engineering software whose name I forget. Basically the meshes were just triangular nets that surrounded our objects we were studying.
@@ShadyForest ANSYS Fluent, COMSOL Multiphysics, ABAQUS, SolidWorks etc.
Must have been one of those...
When making the Saturn, Sega didnt get the memo.
Great video! Would love to learn more of what goes on behind the proverbial screen!
How many people already knew this but watched it to see how vox would explain it?
*That’s how triangles work*
anyone else get this recommended after seeing the unreal engine 5 demo?
For most 3D motion graphics, you can make a mesh a lot easier with triangles
Vox: Everygame is madeup of small triangles.
Minecraft: Am I a joke to you?
yes, even Minecraft.
@@renaigh Minecraft is actually made up of voxels although converted and rasterized to triangles in the end (although I think there's a good chance the RTX version just directly raytraces voxels, since voxels are faster to raytrace than triangles).
Its the same with 3D printing. When I make a model on CAD software its extremely detailed even if its just a simple shape. I run it though a program that turns it into an .stl file which is basically a bunch of triangles forming the shape of the object. You can control the number of triangles to change the "resolution of the model". Then when its almost ready to print the triangle stl model gets sliced through in special software and turned into g code - a series of tool paths based of of the straight lines of the triangles for each printed layer of the model. Its just amazing how stuff works when you go into the tiny details of it.
Lol, I'm so late but when I first got my 3D printer I didn't understand that a Gcode was specific to an individual printer, and spent so long searching online for a "Gcode file converter" to no avail.
@@elliotfinn Yeah totally personalized to your own machine, I wonder in the future the sensors and machine learning will be so good that we will just be able to download a file and print it with little to no prep. Like in Star Trek.
Darn. I thought they used triangles because of influence from the Illuminati.
My dreams are crushed.
In any video game related game I see you in them comments
Digital audio uses the Fourier series to create virtually any sound out of a complex combination of sine waves.
Since sine waves are triangle functions, digital audio can be thought of as a long series of tiny triangles too.
Really great video! Glad to see Ori and the Blind Forest made the cut!
I always love your videos but being a game enthusiast, I was like OMG, they finally did a video on gaming. I hope you do another one soon...
PS I love you, Vox ❤❤❤
Vox: "why video games are made of tiny triangles"
conpiracy theorists: iLuMiNaTi!!!
I appreciate the use of a teapot in the example.
(A teapot was one of the first rendered 3D objetcs, based off a real teapot. It's called the Utah Teapot)
Makes me warm inside, when people explain on what I do for a living.
I'm gonna guess you're either a Streamer in your moms basement or an independent game designer...
Wow this glosses over a lot. Triangles are:
- always closed
- always planar
- never self-intersecting (because planar)
- guaranteed to tessellate
- the shape you can represent with the fewest vertices
- the easiest shape for which to calculate a normal vector (used for lighting math)
- the easiest shape for which to calculate an intersection (used for collision detection when hit boxes and simple radial calculations are not the right approach)
- easy to "strip" by simply listing of a sequence of vertices (which cuts down on the amount of storage needed to define a 3D object by almost a full 66.6% just by its very nature)
- ...
Well duh, they have to keep it simple so most people can follow along. You don't start math with algebra after all.
What she did here is a good starting point.
voxels>>>>
I'm not a programmer, but I got and understood most of your points from the video.
- always closed
- always planar
- never self-intersecting (because planar)
That's exactly the point she made. The rest is just nitpicky. Stop trying to make yourself look super smart by saying something basic in the most complicated way.
I'm disappointed that Nestor got a single up-vote. What is wrong with you schmucks
3:01 the singular term for "vertices" is "vertex", not "vertice".
one of the best videos from Vox in a while!! Keep it coming
Great video!
Small note: The singular of Vertices isn't Vertice, it's Vertex
You made this video just so you could play games at the office? ;)
Often they are. That why a lot of channel who not game related has a video game video.
Stellar quality once again 👌
I just watched the PS5 demo video.
Thank God I saw this video before hand.
Her: Its an action-adventure game with over 60 hours of stunning gameplat 0:07
Speed-runners: Its 3, actually
made with mematic
Shoutout to any 3d modelers watching this vid
Well, that could've been done in 30 seconds.
i love that u opened the video with rdr2
This video is a blessing to every designer who struggles to explain to their mom what they do lol
You look like the actress Keira Knightley.. 😂😂
Damn it Jeff, did you let another clone escape the lab?!?
Talks entirely about polygons, doesn’t once mention that they’re called polygons 🤔
this is Vox, their audience probably doesn't know any fancy terms like polygon or computer
@@Mate_Antal_Zoltan ? Game devs refer to them as tri, not polygons unless it's specifically 4+ sided.
@@Mate_Antal_Zoltan I'm surprised you know how to spell "computer"
@@renaigh why is that, may I ask?
Vox has such a unique way of making their videos, i love this channel 🔥
to save you 5 minutes of your life: It's because smallest number of dots you have to have to define 2D surface is 3
Sooooo minecraft is made out of triangles.....right?
Yes. The squares are broken into two triangles.
@@hikari_no_yume knows what's up
I don't think so
@@hikari_no_yume I am not sure. When you export a Minecraft world into .obj file and import it into blender you get get quadratic planes and not triangles. I think triangles are only used in komplex geometry, but I am not sure.
@@xd-games9748 yeah it's showing you squares (quads) but the software still sees that mesh as triangles. Quads are just easier to work with.
Red Dead 2010 looks better @ 2:20
I was thinking the same thing!
No, just... No.
@@gustavrodriguez910 In that frame it looks better.
@@jklax maybe, if you're blind
@@redragon9588 You're probably looking at 2:20 on a flip phone from 2007 or a Desktop running Windows 98.
More video game-related content like this please Vox!
The process of translating geometry into pixels on your screen is called Rasterisation
But don't we loose the points data after raster?
BIG CHUNGUS WILL BE THE FIRST GAME MADE WITHOUT TRIANGLES
BUY NOW FOR OLNY 10000000$
There have been games made without triangles you noob
@@chairchair1231 I hate when I see people with no humor, I'm quite dissapointed
@@fatt_yoshi5507 in disappointed in you not being able to make a meme that could make me laugh noob
@@chairchair1231 stfu kid
@@danielm4874 triggered
She is gorgeous.
@@sebastianelytron8450 Whoopity scoop, whoop poop.
@@ASLUHLUHCE lol
She's got a fivehead
jholotan best YOU are gorgeous!
Got a delivery here for a 25L drum of water! Man, one of you fellas must be REALLY thirsty!
Just adding here that triangles are not only shapes that can be used for games. Many people have experimented with trapeziums also, especially in 2d games. Trapeziums are sometimes better than triangles as you can save a trapezium with 4 points where you will need 6 points for 2 triangles, leading to less memory consumption. Moreover parallel lines in a trapezium, mimic the scanlines on the screen leading to better sharpness. But after 3d games, all game engines use triangles, and thus now for 2d games as well triangles are used.
Check the skin of your hand, it's made of small triangles as well. That's how it works, in order to make detailed 3D objects you need to use simple 2D objects.
Minecraft: ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT
*OOF*
Vox: Everything is made of triangles.
Minecraft: wut?
OMG!! Very mind blowing video!! At least to me, that like grafic designs, this video is awesome! Thank you to up load, Vox! :))
i taught myself 3d modeling while being stuck in the house for a couple of years, after having a big car crash. its fun making stuff with triangles :)
I'm getting flashbacks to the great fairy from the old legend of zelda
Not gonna lie I think we all knew this
For a News channel, you guys did a decent job explaining how games work under the hood. It would be cool if you included the rendering pipeline and how a game engine takes a set of vertices, to lines, to fragments, to RGB and more. You guys just kinda showed it without any context with that OpenGL teapot.
All these graphics are amazing, but the graphics of Monarchist's heads rolling is better
Agreed
1:53 so you refer “Rendering” as in changing my render distance in Minecraft?
Yup, by changing your render distance, there is less math to be performed for each frame hence you get better performance. Same for any game.
Well render distance just tells your computer how far out it can render. If you have a low render distance, you can't see objects far away, if you have a high render distance, you can see objects that are really far away.
Straight up spoiling Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
to be fair the games already been out for nearly two years
How is it a spoiler? 1. The game is old. 2. You see the final boss in the beginning of the game.
r/Woooosh
So triangles are basically the atoms of the gaming world. Got it.
Just to add to the video, in the 3D modeling pipeline for animations and games, 3D models aren't made out of triangles, but quads (4-sided polygons). You can see that at 0:28 - 0:36, where you can find that the triangles fit together to form very even quads along the entire model. They are automatically converted into triangles upon being exported out to be used for games.
The reason for modeling in quads versus modeling in triangles is that, while using triangles directly would result in more details with fewer polygons, creating, editing, and assigning UV maps ("unfolding" and flattening the model's surface so you can apply a 2D texture map) to models using quads is much easier and much more efficient.
I'm here because Unreal Engine 5 is out. We got lots of triangles
it is not though
What about minecraft
You can form a rectange out of 2 triangles.
"Video games meticulously details"
Me:"Games today can't be ran on my computer" I'm looking at YOU *witcher 3*
This was so cool as someone who uses unity this was cool to see what's behind the magic. More of this great episode
Pixels have nothing to do with triangles. You may have a whole character in the distance fit into a whole pixel.
Pixels are exclusively what the graphic card ships to the screen. They are unconcrete. Triangles are surfaces of the WORKING game world, with collisions and everything.
Such a leap just by adding a single dimension , imagine repeating the process
Took me a while, but I finally got playstation vr and I love it. Been wanting to try vr since the 90s. Could be a topic for a future video on how vr was first introduced, its apparent death and its resurrection.