Question

Hi I’m working on learning 3d game development and I’m starting with JavaScript and the html5 canvas and I was wondering if I were to have a 3d model do I draw the entire model(front, back, etc) and let the web browser decide what to render or should I try to just draw the sides that are in view of the camera? I ask this because I can see how it would be faster to do the latter of the 2 but that can get very complex and I’ll need to do quite a bit more research to find how to do that.

Thanks!!

Answer 1

It’s up to you, but it depends at least in part whether it’s more expensive to spend the time clipping the model or just to render the entire thing dumbly.

Modern GPUs are pretty fast at drawing tons of geometry, so you often won’t optimize the geometry sent to the card. However, it sounds like you’re using the 2D canvas and writing your own rasterizer, so it may well be faster for you to do some quick optimization. Profiling and experimenting will turn up the right answer for your particular project.

If you’re just learning I wouldn’t worry overly about performance at this point but instead making sure you get the fundamental ideas and math down.