OpenGL Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL, Version 4.3, Eighth Edition

OpenGL Graphics Primitives

OpenGL includes support for many primitive types. Eventually they all get rendered as one of three types—points, lines, or triangles. Line and triangle types can be combined together to form strips, loops (for lines), and fans (for triangles). Points, lines, and triangles are the native primitive types supported by most graphics hardware.¹ Other primitive types are supported by OpenGL, including patches, which are used as inputs to the tessellator and the adjacency primitives that are designed to be used as inputs to the geometry shader. Tessellation (and tessellation shaders) are introduced in Chapter 9, and geometry shaders are introduced in Chapter 10. The patch and adjacency primitive types will be covered in detail ...