POINTS

A point is a location in space, typically described by an x, y, z location—in other words, a location coordinate. It has no other properties. It can be translated to different locations or translated by application of a transformation matrix. Points (or coordinates) in 3D graphics are usually represented by homogenous coordinates, which represent the point as a location in 4D space through the addition of the w coordinate. For our purposes, this is just a semantic nicety that is taken care of by the graphics API, so we usually don't have to worry about it. Points are represented by the same structure we use for vectors, and many of the same mathematical operators can be performed on each, but be aware that though they look the same, they are very different.