Every 3D modelling software simply uses a series of flat polygons, small enough to appear curved, to created spheres etc. Why? Why can technology even today find it easier to render literally millions of little triangles, than just one curve?
In: Technology
Triangles are also a very good way to store data. If you boil it down to just geometry, then to draw a triangle you need to store 3 points in 3D space (the most memory) then the order that the edges connect. To draw the NEXT triangle you only need to store one other 3D point, since 2 points already exist. What you end up doing then is usually storing a point list, and some data to describe how to turn those into a surface.
It gets more complicated after that, not all triangles are connected, you are storing directional normal for each point, texcoords and so on…
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