Orientation: Front and Back Faces
A surface is an oriented geometric element with a front side and a rear side. By default, the back side of surfaces is not rendered. This procedure is called "backface culling". In Shaper, the rear sides not rendered are displayed in red.
Two visualization options are available in the Viewport menu:
Icon | Function | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Track culling | Renders culled backfaces in red, making it possible to tell which faces aren't displayed. This option is enabled by default. |
| Backface culling | Optimizes rendering by not calculating the back of surfaces, substantially accelerates the calculation of interactive 3D images. This option is enabled by default. |
To use the backface culling correctly, the front face of the surfaces needs to be oriented to the visible side of the delimited volume. You can modify the orientation of the surface front and back faces from the Surface menu:
Reverse: reverses the orientation of the selected surfaces.
The incorrectly oriented surfaces are selected...
... and then inverted.
Example of the Reverse function (initial orientation on the left, final orientation on the right).