[Solved] [1.12.2] Optimized Client-Side structure rendering

[simicats]

Good day,

 

I've recently hit a wall playing around with the rendering hooks: 
Suppose you have a fairly large (~500) collection of BlockStates and want to render them as a preview in the client world only - calling

BlockRendererDispatcher.renderBlock(IBlockState, BlockPos, IBlockAccess, BufferBuilder)

this many times during a

RenderWorldLastEvent

works in a way, but doesn't seem like the way to go, especially concerning optimization. 
I've had a look at some alternatives, those used by the mod Schematica for instance. However before I look into extending from RenderGlobal with my limited understanding of the engine itself,

I was interested in whether I've missed any obvious / recommended ways to go about this, as I am sure this has been done many times before. ?

Any suggestions are welcome, thanks for your time.~

Edited March 7, 2019 by simicats

[Cadiboo]

You can cache the BufferBuilder results by doing the same thing that RenderChunk does. I’ll write you some example code in a bit because it’s relatively complicated and I have lots of experience but the basic idea is:

1) Render your data to your own BufferBuilder

2) Render your BufferBuilder from the event

3) Update the BufferBuilder when your data changes 

[simicats]

Hello Cadiboo and thanks for your response, I'm glad to have found an expert on the matter. =]

Caching a BufferBuilder sounds very reasonable, if you feel like leaving some code / reference: I'd be most interested in the general life cycle of said Buffer, from the size on creation to the render call in the event. 

[Cadiboo]

Ideally you would do the block rebuilding off-thread or even multithreaded. I haven't done that in this example though.

https://gist.github.com/Cadiboo/753607e41ca4e2ca9e0ce3b928bab5ef

If you do multi-thread/off-thread your rebuilding, you will need to have proper thread safe code.

Edited March 6, 2019 by Cadiboo

[simicats]

Fantastic, this has been very insightful, thanks again for your help. =]