Feature request: export only blocks visible from the surface

[erich666]

Would it be possible to add a feature that exports only visible surface blocks? This would significantly optimize 3D scenes, especially for animations or massive landscapes, and greatly reduce the polygon count

Exporting mountain landscapes in Mineways is tricky because it only supports a cubic volume for height and export. (Small chunks work, but large landscapes suffer)

The red areas in my example are unnecessary parts, like the sides and bottoms of the mountains, that get included in the export. These aren't visible or needed and just add unnecessary mesh, making optimization harder.

The green areas are the surface—the parts visible from a top-down view. That's all I want to export.

The middle flat area is fine as the height/depth is correctly, but the mountains include the massive red areas, which I don’t need. This limitation of Mineways makes it difficult to optimize the export properly .

[erich666]

This request was from user "Z..." on the Discord server. My reply:

I figured it was the mountains causing problems. It's also a bit tricky with tunnels. Just one little tunnel from the underground to the surface and - boom - all the tunnels are then considered visible. Or you build a house and it connects to a tunnel, same sort of problem. It's easy to say "do the right thing", but it turns out to be tricky to figure out what the right thing is in some cases. So, I am thinking about it, and want to think it through before I start coding it up. Anyway, honestly, it's a nice feature to consider, so thanks for suggesting it (and thanks for the kind words).