Editing Hidden-surface determination (section)

=== Back-face culling ===
{{main|Back-face culling}}

With 3D objects, some of the object's surface is facing the camera, and the rest is facing away from the camera, i.e. is on the backside of the object, hindered by the front side. If the object is completely opaque, those surfaces never need to be drawn. These surfaces are determined by the vertex winding order: if the triangle drawn has its vertices in clockwise order on the projection plane when facing the camera, they switch into counter-clockwise order when the surface turns away from the camera.

Incidentally, this approach also makes the objects completely transparent when the viewpoint camera is located inside them, because then all the surfaces of the object are facing away from the camera and are culled by the renderer. To prevent this artifact, the object must be set as double-sided (i.e. no back-face culling is done) or have separate inside surfaces.