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Godot: Node as child of Node2D stays visible when parent turns invisible

turning a Node2D invisible does not apply to it's base-class-Node children – these stay visible. Changing their type to Node2D then makes them become invisible along with the parent.

I see that a base-Node cannot be turned invisibe, but having some buried deep within my scene-tree, I wonder if it wouldn't be practical to have them adopt the behaviour of their parent in such a case.

Is there a reason for this behaviour? And can I somehow make a Node get invisible in such a case as well?

Solution

  • The Inheritance chain for a Node2D looks like this:

    Node2D < CanvasItem < Node < Object

    The visibility property is on the CanvasItem. So, the Node2D has that property because it inherits from CanvasItem. A Node does not have a visibility property, and therefore, it's not possible to set such a property there.

    Additionally, a Node item by itself is not visible in-game. That is, there's nothing rendered for it by default.

    Sprite1
    Node2D
        Sprite2

    If you turn off visibility of Sprite1, then Sprite2 is also made invisible.

    However, with this structure:

    Sprite1
    Node
        Sprite2

    Turning off the visibility of Sprite1 does not impact the visibility of Sprite2.

    (Thanks to Jgodfrey on godotengine.org!)