I’m pretty curious about this, it seemed straightforward at first, but now I’m not so sure. Figured I should ask just to be on the safe side.
If I have an object which becomes more transparent the further from the camera it gets. Once it reaches 100% transparency, is it still ‘visible’ to the camera? In the sense of does it still gets calculated like it would at 99% or less, or once it hits 100% transparency is it treated the same as if it had been clipped by the camera or had its mesh render component switched off, as in, no longer taken into consideration until it’s 99% visible or less again.
Unless a script turns it off, it’ll still be rendered. It’s still having to render the pixels each frame to know it’s 100% transparent.
edit: This has been bugging me for a while. Why do you two always post right after each other? It’s incredibly noticeable as you both have nearly the same icon.
the rendering cost of 100% transparent is the same as 0% transparent on an alpha blended material, its still getting fully calculated and then just not rendered at the end
if something does not have to render, better disable the renderer.
Erk, I didn’t even realize anyone replied! My bad!
That’s a shame, I figured it would be the case though. I was hoping to use it as part of a method of optimizing grass created differently (I don’t use regular Unity terrain), but the way its done breaks using layer distance culling (large overall object) and also using a separate camera for the grass alone (sits above things when it should be behind). Was just hopeful it might work.
Still though, it will continue to work nicely for fading out just prior to the far clipping plane. I wanted to avoid the use of particles for faked volumetric distant fog., so that’s a good thing.
@windexglow I’ll probably change mine soon, it confuses me too and i think I’ve posted when I haven’t, lol.
