Pretty simple idea, add a new SurfaceType that prevents said side from rendering.
Reasons for wanting this:
Places could take advantage of this to improve performance
Terrain created using triangles would render faster if only the top ( visible ) side was rendered
Would allow ‘meshes’ to be made out of parts without us having to use CSG ( e.g. would make importing from blender better as the triangles would only have the outer side rendered )
Not a bad idea, but there is still a lot of other things that should be done before this…
The check on the surface whether or not it has render set to true may actually cost more than just automatically rendering all the faces, it depends on how roblox has their render engine set up, and if you do this, it will take more GRAM/RAM, since the collision mesh will be different from the render mesh for the parts
Another cool idea would be allowing different sides of parts to have different material types
This is a pretty good idea.
I don’t see any downside to doing this, it’s relatively simple to implement, and it fits with the current SurfaceType usage.
Major support, just because of the Blender importing needs.
This isn’t going to help you import blender meshes 
Just because you cut off half of the render faces doesn’t mean it’s going to perform any better. There are still physics to account for every single one of those instances, and even if you have CanCollide set to false that’s still thousands of instances ROBLOX has to deal with – in other words, not a fun time, and certainly not what you’re expecting. The only way imported meshes would be feasible is if they were imported to a CSG union.
If you have 100,000 Parts, that’s 600,000 verticies to render (assuming they all have a formfactor of Brick). If only 3 sides are visible on average, you can cut the rendering load almost in half, which, to those who aren’t running SETI@home while they play roblox with AA and AF set to the absolute max and are rendering 1080p video in 3DS MAX [size=1]cough gieco480 cough[/size], is significant.
I’m pretty sure ROBLOX already applies a technique called backface culling to avoid drawing of polygons that are not viewed at a specific point in time, it’s better to leave this up to the engine instead of forcing developers to do this themselves in my opinion.
(Also, first post o3o)
[quote] I’m pretty sure ROBLOX already applies a technique called backface culling to avoid drawing of polygons that are not viewed at a specific point in time, it’s better to leave this up to the engine instead of forcing developers to do this themselves in my opinion.
(Also, first post o3o) [/quote]
Backface culling only affects faces that aren’t facing toward the camera. Faces that are facing the camera, but obstructed by other parts, are still rendered. NoRender would fix that.
How dare you steal my first post.
Anyway, it wouldn’t exactly hurt to allow developers to do this, and having this wouldn’t exactly force developers to do it themselves as the engines backface culling would still be active. ( That’s if it exists )
Sorry to necrobump this thread, but I could definitely use this on glass corners without needing to use CSG, also have we gotten an admin to respond with why this can/can’t be implemented.
Use a BlockMesh (Is that what it’s called?) and set one sides size to 0. Will fix this issue.
Glass doesn’t come that thin for railings… nor does that really solve the issue.
Now that we can import meshes, you could just take a cube and remove any sides you don’t want shown and import it.
Happen to know if moderation actually approves meshes with missing faces?
AFAIK they approve anything as long as it’s not explicitly inappropriate or obviously from anything on <a&href=http://devforum.roblox.com/t/list-of-prohibited-intellectual-properties/19997>this list. I’ve imported a single triangle before and it was approved.
How does it not solve the issue? The inner faces become invisible, and you can always do the same for the other side if you really need “thickness” of the glass. The result of that, and making the surface type to not render produce the same result. People have been doing it for years. You seem to want to get it done with, since you’ve bumped a year-old post. Unless you want to wait another year (not guaranteed, even) then I don’t see why you wouldn’t do it.
Total support, the underside of my terrain currently looks like this:
