# Original Post

[RobM](/content/profile/130777-robm/index.html)

**Nov 2, 2021 at 10:28 PM**

I'm confused about tessellation. All the docs state that the maximum tessellation for a quad is 64 which effectively increases a 2-triangle quad into 64x64x2 triangles consistently across the original patch/quad. What I've seen online though is dynamic/localised tessellation where particular areas of the quad can be tessellated more than others, sometimes by using a grayscale texture or something similar. I've also seen distance-based demos where it looks like tessellation happens gradually at a particular distance from the camera - so you effectively end up with a round area of tessellation around the camera.

Does anyone know how this can be done?

[RobM](/content/profile/130777-robm/index.html)

**Nov 2, 2021 at 11:27 PM**

Just twigged this. I was thinking that you only draw a single quad when tessellating but you can also draw a large grid using triangles and tessellate each triangle based on the control points’ positions.

[SuperVGA](/content/profile/144662-supervga/index.html)

**Nov 3, 2021 at 8:59 AM**

> **RobMadison said:**  
> you can also draw a large grid using triangles and tessellate each triangle based on the control points’ positions.

Yes, that is typically how it's done - the vertex shader gets the distance and passes it on to the tessellation control stage, one place or the other, it's decided what the resulting tessellation level will be.

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