Greg M. Johnson <"gregj;-)56590\""@aol.c;-)om> wrote:
: How many
: triangles (I assume it's several thousand) does it take to cause the
: same memory usage/parse time  as one sphere?

  I think that 1 triangle would be a good guess.

  1 triangle is 1 object, exactly like a sphere, so it will take approximately
the same amount of memory. It will take also approximately the same amount
of parse time.

  If you make a spherical surface composed of thousands of triangles, it will
take a lot more memory and will be a lot slower to parse than a single
sphere.
  However, the advantage of the triangle mesh comes when you start copying
it. If you want to create 1000 spherical surfaces, the meshes will probably
take less memory (if you make one mesh representing one sphere and then
copy it 1000 times).
  Although in the case of spheres I don't know if there's such a big advantage
in using meshes. Spheres are pretty fast to render and don't take too much
memory.
  The best advantage could be achieved if you first make a union of, say,
some hundreds of spheres and then start copying this union many times. If
the union of spheres is a triangle mesh, then you'll start getting a lot
of memory and rendering time saving.

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):_;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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