Highlight Instance alternative

Highlighting Parts

Hello Devs

I was wondering if there is a way to highlight parts without using the actual Highlight Instance, as

It is in heavy beta and has many replication issues and bugs
It can be performance heavy (dependant on use)
There is a limit to how many you can use.

I was wondering if anyone knows any alternatives/workarounds? thanks

I would look into any of Roblox’s handle adornments, such as BoxHandleAdornment | Documentation - Roblox Creator Hub

It wont be an exact outline but instead a bounding box (or whatever type of adornment you choose.) From my understanding this is the closest to a highlight you can get in Roblox at the moment.

What about around MeshParts? They all have different shapes and every selection/handle instance tends to be locked to one shape like a cube or a sphere

You can do it thanks to viewport.
How it would basically work is that you make ViewportFrame inside ScreenGui, and you scale viewport to whole screen. then you will clone every single part you want to be highlighted inside this viewport, and then you just need to set CurrentCamera of your viewport to the workspace.CurrentCamera.

I recommend watching this video as it is based on that:

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This would be very tedious and perform so much worse than just using highlights

I mean, yes, but it is a workaround + since it would copy parts locally, it might lag only for people with bad performance device, but you could make it turn on and off. Also it would depend how many parts you want to highlight.
It all depends on how you want to use it.

I believe the OP is looking for an alternative because of the poor perfomance and limitations of highlights

I believe highlights works similar way anyway, so this is just a way to not reach any limitations
highlight is used on the left, viewport frame on the right, result is similar
image

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After a bit of playing around, this is how close I got:

If you want to recreate this, I made Highlight folder in workspace, where every part you want to highlight would be placed.
image

Then you need to make ScreenGui inside StarterGui with ViewportFrame and LocalScript in it.
image
don’t forget to scale up viewport, and make background transparent

And then just paste this into localScript:

local gui = script.Parent
local viewportFrame = gui.ViewportFrame

viewportFrame.CurrentCamera = workspace.CurrentCamera

for _, object in pairs(workspace:WaitForChild("Highlight"):GetChildren()) do
	local highlight = object:Clone()
	highlight.Parent = viewportFrame
	highlight.Material = Enum.Material.Neon
	highlight.Transparency = 0.25
	highlight.Color = Color3.new(1, 0, 0.0156863)
end
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How many highlights are you planning to use that the issues you listed are a dealbreaker?

There is a limit to how many you can use.

image

did you try grouping what needs to be highlighted into a model?

It’s not just the limit, its also the multiple replication issues and performance heavy they are. I am 100% using over the limit, so I can’t use them.

Some need to have different properties and configurations. Either way, I can’t group them because of some scripting stuff AND replication again.

I will probably be using viewport, thank you

You can also try exporting models with Inside-Out faces from a 3D software, like Blender.

In Blender
In Roblox Studio
  • When exported it into studio I just colored the inside out face neon and white…
    A3

This method doesn’t use Scripts, and could be useful for smaller case scenarios. But if you have something that has a high mesh Triangle Count. Then I don’t recommend just duplicating itself on another due to performance issues. This also applies to any image texture you have with the model.
Granted this also has a different look from the highlight, so it really is just whatever you think would fit best with your situation.

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