Question

When using wireframe fill mode in Direct3D, all rectangular faces display a diagonal running across due to the face being split in to two triangles. How do I eliminate this line? I also want to remove hidden surfaces. Wireframe mode doesn’t do this.

I need to display a Direct3D model in isometric wireframe view. The rendered scene must display the boundaries of the model’s faces but must exclude the diagonals.

Answer 1

Getting rid of the diagonals is tricky as the hardware is likely to only draw triangles and it would be difficult to determine which edge is the diagonal. Alternatively, you could apply a wireframe texture (or a shader that generates a suitable texture). That would solve the hidden line issues, but would look odd as the thickness of the lines would be dependant on z distance.

Using line primitives is not trivial, although surfaces facing away from the camera can be easily removed, partially obscured surfaces would require manual clipping. As a final thought, do a two pass approach – the first pass draws the filled polygons but only drawing to the z buffer, then draw the lines over the top with suitable z bias. That would handle the partially obscured surface problem.