Why are polygons tesselated into triangles?

[plates]

Just a simple question I couldn't find an adequate answer to on google, why are polygons tesselated into triangles? they are both made of of verticies so what is the point? - A technically detailed answer would be cool http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/smile.gif

Thanks

Plates.

[tempocrew]

Well one big reason that I know of is that triangles are guaranteed to be coplanar.

[blood.angel]

Yeah, a triangle is guarenteed to be drawn as it appears, but a polygonal shape can be drawn wrongly by the computer.

[DFrey]

I think the main reason is silicon real-estate. It requires a lot less silicon to rasterize a triangle than it does an arbitrary polygon.

[blood.angel]

Originally posted by DFrey:
I think the main reason is silicon real-estate. It requires a lot less silicon to rasterize a triangle than it does an arbitrary polygon.

That is true. It is easier to fill in a single planed polygon.