As a Roblox developer, it is currently impossible to incorporate terrain viewing into ViewportFrame.
I know ViewportFrame is in beta, and not much documentation exists about it.
I want to use ViewportFrame as a minimap, which generates a picture from below. Problem is, you can’t put Terrain instances under ViewportFrame, in which objects have to be parented under it to render.
Therefore, if the ViewportFrame can render from outside its parental structure, this can be achieved. Perhaps some new instance related to ViewportFrame can be created solely for this aspect, but this thread will retain to adding or changing functionality to this particular instance.
Another idea that could be tagged along adding terrain support for ViewportFrame is the ability for ViewportFrames to be affected with lighting, if you are rendering from outside its parental structure. Perhaps a “Lighting” property can be added to the ViewportFrame, with most of the properties that Lighting has, like Brightness and Ambient, and lighting effects such as BlurEffect and BloomEffect that can render when parented under the ViewportFrame instance.
As a Roblox developer, it is currently impossible to to render the terrain in a viewport frame, you have to know the terrain really well and be very smart to develop a system that can render the terrain in a viewport frame.
If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my game / my development experience because, they would not only help me, but also many other people now and in the future. That would save everyone a lot of time and this feature would be requested now or later anyway. With this you could do incredible things in the future, like improving Replay’s systems (which I’m working on), improving the surveillance camera, making it so that you can see the grass or other material and much more.
Viewport frames are already incredible since you introduced them and they are even more incredible since you introduced light into them on June 19th, but if they added this feature, they would be the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen in the studio. It’s just too bad it’s not there. I and many others would surely be happy if this update came out.
Because the viewport frame is better than the one of the beta version today, it would be possible today that what was impossible before, so I ask again.