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Using Viewports

Introduction

Think of a Viewport as a screen onto which the game is projected. In order to see the game, we need to have a surface on which to draw it. That surface is the Root Viewport.

SubViewports are a kind of Viewport that can be added to the scene so that there are multiple surfaces to draw on. When we are drawing to a SubViewport, we call it a render target. We can access the contents of a render target by accessing its corresponding texture. By using a SubViewport as render target, we can either render multiple scenes simultaneously or we can render to a ViewportTexture which is applied to an object in the scene, for example a dynamic skybox.

SubViewports have a variety of use cases, including:

• Rendering 3D objects within a 2D game

• Rendering 2D elements in a 3D game

• Rendering dynamic textures

• Generating procedural textures at runtime

• Rendering multiple cameras in the same scene

What all these use cases have in common is that you are given the ability to draw objects to a texture as if it were another screen and can then choose what to do with the resulting texture.

Another kind of Viewports in Godot are Windows. They allow their content to be projected onto a window. While the Root Viewport is a Window, they are less flexible. If you want to use the texture of a Viewport, you'll be working with SubViewports most of the time.

Input

Viewports are also responsible for delivering properly adjusted and scaled input events to their children nodes. By default SubViewports don't automatically receive input, unless they receive it from their direct SubViewportContainer parent node. In this case, input can be disabled with the Disable Input property.

For more information on how Godot handles input, please read the Input Event Tutorial.

Listener

Godot supports 3D sound (in both 2D and 3D nodes). More on this can be found in the Audio Streams Tutorial. For this type of sound to be audible, the Viewport needs to be enabled as a listener (for 2D or 3D). If you are using a SubViewport to display your World3D or World2D, don't forget to enable this!

Cameras (2D & 3D)

When using a Camera3D or Camera2D, it will always display on the closest parent Viewport (going towards the root). For example, in the following hierarchy:

CameraA will display on the Root Viewport and it will draw MeshA. CameraB will be captured by the SubViewport along with MeshB. Even though MeshB is in the scene hierarchy, it will still not be drawn to the Root Viewport. Similarly, MeshA will not be visible from the SubViewport because SubViewports only capture nodes below them in the hierarchy.

There can only be one active camera per Viewport, so if there is more than one, make sure that the desired one has the current property set, or make it the current camera by calling:

camera.make_current()

By default, cameras will render all objects in their world. In 3D, cameras can use their cull_mask property combined with the VisualInstance3D's layer property to restrict which objects are rendered.

Scale & stretching

SubViewports have a size property, which represents the size of the SubViewport in pixels. For SubViewports which are children of SubViewportContainers, these values are overridden, but for all others, this sets their resolution.

It is also possible to scale the 2D content and make the SubViewport resolution different from the one specified in size, by calling:

sub_viewport.set_size_2d_override(Vector2i(width, height)) # Custom size for 2D.
sub_viewport.set_size_2d_override_stretch(true) # Enable stretch for custom size.

For information on scaling and stretching with the Root Viewport visit the Multiple Resolutions Tutorial

Worlds

For 3D, a Viewport will contain a World3D. This is basically the universe that links physics and rendering together. Node3D-based nodes will register using the World3D of the closest Viewport. By default, newly created Viewports do not contain a World3D but use the same as their parent Viewport. The Root Viewport always contains a World3D, which is the one objects are rendered to by default.

A World3D can be set in a Viewport using the World 3D property, that will separate all children nodes of this Viewport and will prevent them from interacting with the parent Viewport's Wor