Overview
This is basically a relatively simple Blender Overdraw (Geometry Density) and Quad Overdraw visualizer plugin for blender. This has mostly been a small personal project all about trying to use entirely AI to make something for me. This whole thing was made with Deepseek V4 Pro! Am i true vibe coder now? This is my first time properly delving into vibe coding so yeah. I thought it would be a good idea to share this with you all.
Do note that this requires the Blender backend to be set to Vulkan.
It will pretty much not work without Vulkan. The consequences of AI use, eh?
It works with Blender 5.1.2 and Blender 5.2.0. Probably works with all 5.x versions. Some 4.x versions can work.
How to Install
Make sure to extract the python file somewhere you would like to actually keep the plugin.
(Or you can just directly use the rar file itself. Blender allows this.)
On the top left corner of Blender select Edit then in the drop down menu select Preferences. In the Preferences window, look for Add-ons and click on it. In the Add-ons menu, look at the top right of the window and youll see an downwards pointing arrow. Click on it. In it’s drop down menu click Install from Disk then just simply find the python file for the plugin and youre good to go!
Make sure to set the backend of blender to Vulkan.
You can do this in the Preferences window right in the System tab. In the Display Graphics section you can set the backend to Vulkan.
How to use
You can start using it right away by holding Z! You will see two new additions to the Z key pie menu. Overdraw View and Quad Overdraw. Overdraw View will move you to the geometry density visualizer. Areas with much higher density on your screen will appear as a brighter red while other less dense areas will appear as a darker blue.
The Quad Overdraw view will visualize to you, well, quad overdraw. Denser pixels/quads will appear much brighter than other pixels.
In either of the modes you can use the Z key pie menu to switch between each or return back to EEVEE. You can also find these two visualizers in the Render properties side menu. They are displayed as two different Render Engines. You can also find all of their properties and statistics here,
Viewport Statistics & Customization
Overdraw View (Aka Geometry Density)
Overdraw View is the most basic of the visualizers. It’s role is just to display geometry density and thats it.
Background Color
Simply controls the background color of the entire viewport.
Resolution Scale
Controls the actual resolution scale of the viewport. By default it should be 100% Aka your native viewport resolution.
You may need to lower it in some way more demanding scenes.
Low & High Overdraw Colors
These two colors simply represent the Low Geometry Density and High Geometry Density color range. Higher geometry density will translate into the pixel color being much closer to the actual high geometry density color.
Threshold
Limits how much geometry density can actually be calculated and displayed. Very high threshold values usually tend to show everything much more closely to the Low Overdraw color and vice versa.
Wireframe
By default the only visible option will be “Show Wireframe”. Once enabled, it will expose a couple more options.
Show All Wireframe will display ALL wireframes (even obstructed ones) from the scene.
Wireframe Brightness controls how much brighter the wireframe color is compared to the pixels beneath it.
Wireframe Thickness just controls the actual thickness of it.
Ignore Backface
Simply just ignores backfaces. I recommend you keep this enabled.
Viewport Statistics
A simple list of a couple stats. You can update all of them by clicking the “Compute Stats” button. Those stats will be computed from the perspective of the viewport.
Screen Density represents a percentage of how dense your entire viewport is. 100% could mean either that your entire viewport is covered by a single layer of triangles or that a small section of your screen is crammed with TONS of triangles. This percentage can go well over 100%!
Average Density represents the actual average geometry density across all pixels from the viewport.
Highest Overdraw represents the highest geometry density of a single pixel from the viewport.
Lowest Overdraw represents the lowest geometry density of a single pixel from the viewport.
Quad Overdraw View
The Quad Overdraw View visualizes actual, well, the quad overdraw of your scene!
Background Color
Simply controls the background color of the entire viewport.
Resolution Scale
Controls the actual resolution scale of the viewport. By default it should be 100% Aka your native viewport resolution.
You may need to lower it in some way more demanding scenes.
Threshold
Limits the maximum rendered Quad Overdraw. By default the limit is set to 11 to scale between all 11 colors.
Quad Overdraw Visualization Ramp
A color ramp comprised of 11 different color “levels”. Each level represents the amount of redraws happening within a quad assuming the Threshold is set to 11.
Lower or higher thresholds than 11 will simply scale the colors accordingly.
Ignore Backface
Simply ignores backfaces. I recommend you keep this enabled.
Viewport Statistics
A simple list of a couple stats. You can update all of them by clicking the “Compute Stats” button. Those stats will be computed from the perspective of the viewport.
Quad Density represents an actual average percentage of how much quad overdraw is happening in the entire viewport.
Overdraw Average represents the actual average amount of quad overdraw of every pixel/quad in the entire viewport.
Overdraw Highest represents the one singular pixel/quad from the entire viewport with the highest amount of redraws.
The Plugin
BlenderOverdrawPlugin 1.0.zip (8.9 KB)