Best way to render a mesh 'on top' of existing scene...

Unity Engine
1

Hello all,

I need to render a mesh that needs to appear ‘on top’ of the currently rendered scene… that is in other words not culled by other objects.

What is the best way to do that?

  • Is the two camera approach recommended? (with the 2nd camera rendering only the objects on a special layer and camera one everything else)
  • Should I draw the mesh manually in a call like in OnPostRender?
  • Can a special shader do the job more simply?

Thanks for the hint! :slight_smile:

Dan

2

Second camera is pretty standard. It can even have a different FOV etc.

3

A second camera setup to render a special layer is a good option. You’ll need to setup the camera depth value so it renders after your other cameras, you’ll probably also want to set the camera to only clear depth.

1 Like
4

Thanks Gibbonator Koyima for taking the time.

I gather the 2nd camera option to be the most flexible robust.

Interestingly I just discovered that some shaders can render right on top of everything. For example, creating a “3D Text” will create a component with a ‘Text Mesh’ native component setup to use the ‘Font Material’ material which is using the ‘GUI/Text Shader’ shader and a Font Texture atlas.

I wonder if these ‘draw on top’ shaders are a viable option to draw simple meshes on top more easily than the 2 camera setup…

Dan,

5

Set your objects shader “Queue” tag to “Overlay” and it will render on top of the rest of the scene.

6

Hi aubergine,

Thanks for that heads up… Searching in all my *.shader files I did find a few examples of “Queue” = “Overlay” and should be ready to experiment… :slight_smile:

P.S. Great sig! :slight_smile: