Just a little about me, I’m a 3D artist and have worked with 3D max for about 13 years. I’ve been using unreal for a little while now and was wondering to what extent does unreal engine render hidden geometry? By hidden I mean objects below the floor plane or within one another.
I find level designers dragging rocks and other items through the ground and through one another. From a my view I feel like that’s a lot of extra geometry you could do without?
I’m guessing it only renders what it sees however, I’d like to know for a fact.
There are several layers of checks, that would determine if an object is to be rendered or not. Firstly, objects fully outside camera frustum are excluded(Frustum cull). Then objects, fully covered by other objects, are discarded(occlusion cull).
Typically, everything else will be rendered. That includes objects, that are partially visible. They will be rendered fully.
I find level designers dragging rocks
and other items through the ground and
through one another. From a my view I
feel like that’s a lot of extra
geometry you could do without?
Technically your are right, and keeping overdraw(overlapping geometry) to a minimum is a good practice. However, with deffered shading, the cost of overdraw is significantly lower and commonly can be neglected to some degree in favor of artistic freedom and speed of production during assembly of the level.