What is a Vertex?

A vertex is a coordinate in a 2D or a 3D space. They are the building blocks of "Primitives" in 3D Geometry and are used to create things from a simple cube to a complicated scene constituting of a series of meshes. Primitives are one- or two-dimensional entities or surfaces such as points, lines, and polygons (a flat multishaded shape) that are assembled in a 3D space to create 3D objects.

For example a 3D-cube consists of six two-dimensional squares, each placed on a separate face. Each corner of the square (or any primitive) is called a vertex. Throughout Direct3D, vertices describe position(x, y, z coordinates) and orientation. Each vertex in a primitive is described by a vector that gives its position, color, texture coordinates, and a normal vector that gives its orientation.

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