[1.12.2] Render Shrinking Chunk of Blocks

[DavidM]

I am creating a block that, when placed down, will destroy nearby blocks in the range of 11x11x11.

I am trying to create it so that when the process happen, an animation appear.

I would like the animation to look like as if the whole chunk of blocks in the range of 11x11x11 shrinks into one block in 1 second duration.

I am planning to accomplish this animation with TESR that renders all the block in the 11x11x11 and shrink them a bit per tick; however, I am concerned that rendering 11**3 blocks every tick is going to cause significant performance issue on the client.

 

Is there a better way to accomplish this?

[Matryoshika]

Whilst I cannot help out with the proper way to disable the blocks from rendering inside this area, and substituting your own animation, I can quite confidently state that it will not be as performance intensive as you think, if you keep OpenGL calls to a minimum.
I've made some menger-sponge inspired compressed blocks (20^1, 20^2.... 20^6 block compression) and whilst I was dealing with pre-calculated models and bakedQuad-caching, T3 compression(20^3) or 8,000 miniature blocks rendered inside a single blockspace did cause some stutter, but not game-breaking. (Though it wasn't animated)
Though 11^3 isn't a small number, that still only equates to 1,331 blocks. Yes, scaling all of this will have a higher performance drain than just basic rendering, but it shouldn't be impossible if you focus on performance.

[V0idWa1k3r]

You could collect all the quads into a single buffer and render it. The most expensive operation in graphics is the draw call. Kinda similar to what a FastTESR does.

[DavidM]

Thanks. I shall try rendering everything in a single buffer and optimize my GL calls.

 

59 minutes ago, Matryoshika said:

disable the blocks from rendering inside this area

The blocks inside the area will be destroyed prior to the animation; therefore, it won’t be necessary to disable the rendering of the blocks.