In a topic 2,"Sprites and 2D Graphics", we described how sprite textures are used to draw 2D images on the screen.You can think of this concept as placing stickers on the screen and moving them around.
3D graphics images are generated differently. At their core, they are a bunch of triangles drawn on the screen. If this sounds simplistic, it is in order to be fast. Modern graphics hardware can be so fast because the types of operations it performs are limited when compared to general-purpose processors used for CPUs in PCs. Graphics hardware has dedicated hardware for these operations and are designed to process millions of triangle and pixel operations.
Groups of triangles drawn on the screen are commonly called geometry.These collections of geometry can represent almost anything from a box, to a space ship, to a human marine storming the beaches of Normandy.
Each triangle is made up of three vertices. Each vertex represents one of the corners of the triangle and must contain at least the position of itself.A vertex can also contain other data such as color, texture coordinates, normals, and so on.
Although triangles determine the shape of what is displayed on the screen, there are many factors that determine the final color of pixels the triangle covers on the screen.
2D Sprites Are Actually in 3D!
When you draw 2D sprites in XNA Game Studio, you use the 3D graphics pipeline. In the past, 2D graphics were drawn using a technique called blitting, which was copying memory from a surface such as a texture to the display memory. With today’s graphics cards, it is easier and faster to just draw two-textured triangles when you want to draw a texture on the screen. Because sprites are also 3D geometry, many of the topics in this topic are also applicable to them.
