Do Use Indexed Lists

Indexed lists can reduce mesh storage requirements by eliminating redundant vertices.

Vertex buffers enable the graphics driver to cache vertex data attributes, such as texture coordinates for mapping 2D images to the mesh, and model/space position. For static objects which have vertex attributes that change infrequently if at all, vertex buffers improve performance as the cached data can be reused to render many frames.

Index buffers allow vertex re-use for triangles that share an edge

In the example above, an index buffer is used in conjunction with a vertex buffer. Index buffers define the order in which elements of a vertex buffer should be accessed to represent the triangles in a mesh. Vertex attributes are written into the vertex buffer once, then referenced as many times as required to represent the triangles surrounding that vertex position. This means that index buffers improve performance and reduce the storage space requirements of complex mesh data.

PowerVR hardware is optimised for indexed triangle lists

For finely-tuned performance, vertex and index buffers should be sorted. This improves cache efficiency when the data is accessed by the GPU. Our 3D scene exporter and converter tool, PVRGeoPOD, automatically applies sorting to mesh data when generating POD (PowerVR Object Data) files.