Polygons: clockwise or counterclockwise

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3 comments, last by Zaoshi Kaba 10 years, 11 months ago

In OpenGL the "default direction" for triangles is CCW. Makes sense. However, ...is there a standard direction like that for line-strips/polygons? .....I have polygons that are built up from many triangles. It feels more natural to have the points of the line-strip ordered clockwise but I wanted to know if theres a standard for that or it doesnt matter.

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Winding order is used for culling backfaces. So that's why there needs to be an established convention. But you need at least 3 vertices to do that (to calculate a normal that indicates whether something faces in or out of the screen), so it doesn't really make sense for lines.

Thanks. I was not precise. ....my English. I draw a polygon with the mouse. Which is practically a closed polyline/line-strip. Sometimes I need to reorder the points so the polygon is always "drawn" the same direction. (I dont draw the polygon directly, I build it up from triangles. The triangles are drawn CCW.) Should the points of the polygon ordered CW or CCW?

My point was that it doesn't matter.

Hardware can handle both, CW and CCW. If you're drawing triangles with mouse and having problems with backfacing you could render both sides.

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