Beginning 3D Game Programming

Simplifying a Mesh

Now, imagine that the racing game you're creating has a model which sits to the side of the track. This model is quite detailed and has plenty of vertices in it; however, you don't want to waste time drawing the highly detailed model if you can't see it all. You could ask your artist to give you a second, less detailed model and swap out the models you're using, depending on the situation, but that implies that the artist has a lot of free time to make these low-resolution models.

It is easier to simply take the meshes you already have (the high detailed ones) and use the built-in Simplify method on the mesh object. Simplifying a mesh is the act of taking an existing mesh and using a set of provided weights to remove as many ...