Hi!
I know two ways to build a minimap. One is to use a camera over the player and render an area around the player. The other is to take a snapshot of the level and draw the player and other characters on it. Can someone shed some light on the efficiency of the two methods? I personally feel that the second method is the best, as it doesn’t require two screen render passes. Your input and suggestions please.
Second approach is more efficient as you dont need to scene capture but would require a bit more math in the material to map the parameters (offset, orientation, etc) inside the widget map you create.
First approach is simpler and if the map you want to achieve is not a full screen map but a small map in the UI, your scene capture dont need to be full resolution. Also you can add elements in the game to be rendered ONLY by the scene capture and exclude all others so this way you can achieve different look for the map and render only what you decide and not the full scene 
Cheers!
Dany
2 Likes
Thanks for the reply. You echoed my thoughts.
1 Like
I found this tutorial which is guiding my way to build the first type. Thought I’ll share.