Building Culler Godot Addon

Building Culler allows you to manage the showing/hiding of upper levels of your 3D buildings when your character enters. This is useful for third-person games where the camera collisions make navigating interiors difficult.

Add a Building node to denote your building, and create BuildingLevel nodes inside of it for each level of your building. All objects inside on your BuildingLevel's will have their visibility, physics, and processing culled if the player enters a floor that is lower than the associated floor.

Don't forget to add a BuildingLevel for your roof, especially for single-story buildings, to cull the roof when the player enters.

Installation

Godot Addons Library

1. Find the Building Culler addon in the Godot Assets Lib tab
2. Enable the plugin in your project settings

Manual

1. Download the release file from the releases page
2. Extract it into your Godot project's addons folder
3. Enable the plugin in your project settings

Getting Started

A simple way to get started is to create a basic scene.

1. Create a new scene with Building as the Top-level Node
2. Add as many BuildingLevel nodes as needed. (Don't forget to add one for the roof!)
3. Each BuildingLevel needs a BuildingLevelCollider and a BuildingLevelInterior.
4. Add a floor, walls, and objects as sub-nodes of your BuildingLevelInterior
5. Adjust the BuildingLevelCollider to cover your BuildingLevelInterior. Add additional BuildingLevelCollider nodes if needed to cover all the nooks and crannies.

Then, add your building to your main scene and assign the Player Target and test it out!

Example

Let's explore an example of how you might set up a building with two levels. Don't forget to add a BuildingLevel for your roof, especially for single-story buildings, to cull the roof when the player enters.

Building
├── BuildingLevel (level: 0)
│   ├── BuildingLevelCollider
│   ├── BuildingLevelCollider (optional)
│   └── BuildingLevelInterior
│       ├── MeshInstance (likely the ground)
│       ├── MeshInstance (likely a wall)
│       ├── MeshInstance (likely some stairs)
│       └── MeshInstance (maybe a door)
├── BuildingLevel (level: 1)
│   ├── BuildingLevelCollider
│   └── BuildingLevelInterior
│       ├── MeshInstance
│       ├── MeshInstance
│       └── MeshInstance
└── BuildingLevel (level: 2) (roof)
    ├── BuildingLevelCollider
    └── BuildingLevelInterior
        └── MeshInstance

In this example, we have a Building node that contains three BuildingLevel nodes:

1. A BuildingLevel node to represent the ground floor of the building
2. A BuildingLevel node to represent the second floor
3. Lastly, a BuildingLevel node to represent the roof

Each BuildingLevel node contains BuildingLevelCollider nodes that represent the collision shape of the level. The BuildingLevel node also contains a single BuildingLevelInterior node that represents the interior of the level.

Issues, Troubleshooting, and Feature Requests

As a full-time engineer, I'm active on Github almost daily. Don't be afraid to create a new Issue if problems arise while using this. ❤️

Node Documentation

There are four different nodes that you can use to manage your building.

1. Building: The root node for your building. This node should be placed at the origin of your building and should contain all of the BuildingLevel nodes.
2. BuildingLevel: A node that represents a level of your building. This keeps track of the objects that should be culled when the player enters a different level.
3. BuildingLevelCollider: A node that represents the collision shape of your building level. This is used to determine when the player has entered the building level.
4. BuildingLevelInterior: A node that represents the interior of your building. This node should contain all of the objects on this level of the building. Everything inside of this node will be culled when the player enters a lower level.

Building Node3D

The Building node is the root node for your building. This node should be placed at the origin of your building and should contain all of the BuildingLevel nodes.

Properties

• building_id String: The unique identifier for this building. This is used to determine which building the player is currently inside of.

• player_target Node3D: The player node that will be used to determine if the player has entered the building.

BuildingLevel Area3D

The BuildingLevel node represents a level of your building. This node should contain all of the objects that should be culled when the player enters a different level.

[!TIP] A Building can have as many BuildingLevel nodes as you need to represent the different levels of your building.

[!TIP] BuildingLevels can have multiple BuildingLevelColliders to represent different areas of the level.

[!WARNING] A BuildingLevel can have only one BuildingLevelInterior node.

Properties

• level float: The level of the building that this node represents. This property determines the order in which the levels are culled. If the player is on a level that is lower than this level, the objects inside of this node will be culled.

• parent_building Building: The Building node that this BuildingLevel belongs to. If this property is not set, the plugin will attempt to find the parent building node.

• level_interior BuildingLevelInterior: The BuildingInterior node that represents the interior of this level. If this property is not set, the plugin will attempt to find the child BuildingInterior node.

BuildingLevelCollider CollisionShape3D

The BuildingLevelCollider node represents the collision shape of your building level. This is used to determine when the player has entered the building level.

[!TIP] A BuildingLevel can have multiple BuildingLevelColliders to represent different areas of the level.

Properties

• parent_level BuildingLevel: The BuildingLevel node that this BuildingLevelCollider belongs to. If this property is not set, the plugin will attempt to find the parent BuildingLevel node.

• parent_building Building: The Building node that this BuildingLevelCollider belongs to. If this property is not set, the plugin will attempt to find the parent building node.

BuildingLevelInterior Node3D

The BuildingLevelInterior node represents the interior of your building. This node should contain all of the objects on this level of the building. Everything inside of this node will be culled when the player enters a lower level.

[!TIP] Make sure to include the floor and walls of the building in the BuildingLevelInterior node to ensure that they're culled properly.

[!TIP] If the ceiling of the level below is a unique node, make sure to include it in the BuildingLevelInterior node of the level above.

[!WARNING] A BuildingLevel can have only one BuildingLevelInterior node.