Does making objects transparent improve performance?

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#1

Hey all!

I’m thinking about optimisation for my builds as of now and have a question to ask.
Does making objects completely transparent improve performance? As in if I were to use textures to represent surfaces instead of making an entire surface visible, would the game run better?

I apologise if this is poorly worded.

Thanks,
DrKat

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#2

For a texture to appear on your screen, it gets rendered.
For the object’s surface to appear on your screen, it gets rendered.

They’re the same. Semitransparent objects cause performance hits but they’re not what you’re asking about (from what I can see).

Edit: Moreover, the client has to download & load up the textures. Built-in materials are available basically immediately at no cost.

#3

as in would this (img 1) be more performance intensive than this? (image 2)

image
image488×534 80.3 KB

image

#4

Rendering engines don’t render faces you can’t see. This is called culling. If you’re looking straight at a side of a cube, the other 5 sides won’t render.

#5

I’m sorry you got an answer so inconclusive, yes, making objects transparent WILL improve performance because they’re not being rendered.
As for the question of those cubes, 2nd cube will cause (so very minimal) memory use, as for the other, depends on if it’s a decal/texture or a SurfaceGui with a Frame.

If it was a Decal/Texture it would cause minimal impact on the memory because it’s loading a texture from the Roblox servers.
If instead it was a SurfaceGui, it would cause little to no impact because it’s a single face rendering a coloured frame.

To summarize:
Making objects transparent will improve performance, as they’re not rendered.
Semi-transparent objects will affect performance due to the calculations implied.

Performance can be highly affected by large amount of meshes with lots of triangles being rendered.

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