Creating meshes.

[Killingsworth]

Hi, I have some questions about creating meshes. I'm new to 3D math so I have some questions.

I found this code: http://www.irrforge.org/index.php/Prima ... r_Irrlicht

for rendering primitives, however I have some questions.

1) Whats a vertex, whats its purpose, and how is it used? (use the cube as an example)

2) Whats a Index, whats its purpose, and how is it used? (once agian use the cube code as an example)

If anyone can clear this up, I'd greatly appreciate it.

[Heizi]

Vertexes are directions or points in 3d space.
There are 3 directions: X,Y,Z:
y
| z
| /
| /
/_______ x

There are vertexes in 2d space too, they dont have the z axis, as you should
know it for example from screen coordinates.The z axis is the direction which
goes into space. Concerning the example, seems that the vertexes
link the edges of the cube.

[bitplane]

vertex = a point in 3d space, contains texture coordinates, colour, position and normal. see http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/docu/st ... ertex.html
index = a list of numbers that say how the vertices are joined together to make shapes. each 3 indices in the list makes a triangle. the index list just says which points join to where, the order says which way round they are... I think clockwise triangles face forwards. You cannot see the back of a triangle.
where two vertices share the same position but different texture coordinates (or colours i suppose) there are multiple vertices for each position.
i think thats about it.