@rbxts/immersive-portals

Perspective-correct portal rendering for roblox-ts. Two paired surfaces become real-looking windows into each other — and walk through them to teleport.

import { Portal, PortalGroup, PortalWindow } from "@rbxts/immersive-portals";

Install

npm install @rbxts/immersive-portals

Quick start

In a client controller (Flamework / vanilla LocalScript):

import { PortalGroup } from "@rbxts/immersive-portals";
import { Workspace } from "@rbxts/services";

const group = new PortalGroup({ autoDiscoverTag: "ImmersivePortal" });
group.enableAutoDiscovery();
group.setWorld(Workspace.WaitForChild("World"));
group.trackAllPlayers();
group.bind();

In Studio: drop two BaseParts in Workspace, tag both with ImmersivePortal, set a matching PortalPair string attribute on each. Done — they pair up and render.

Everything visual in the portal viewport comes from Workspace.World (any name; whatever you pass to setWorld). Put your scenery in that folder, and the library clones it into each portal's ViewportFrame — keeping it auto-synced on ChildAdded/ChildRemoved.

How the World folder gets cloned

flowchart LR
    subgraph WS["Workspace (real)"]
        World["World (Folder)"]
        PortalA["PortalA part<br/>tag: ImmersivePortal<br/>PortalPair: door"]
        PortalB["PortalB part<br/>tag: ImmersivePortal<br/>PortalPair: door"]
        World --> Floor[Floor]
        World --> Walls[Walls]
        World --> Props[Props]
    end

    PG["PortalGroup"]
    PG -. "enableAutoDiscovery()" .-> PortalA
    PG -. "enableAutoDiscovery()" .-> PortalB
    PG -. "setWorld(World)" .-> World

    subgraph Viewports["Per-portal ViewportFrames (cloned)"]
        VA[WorldFrame A]
        VB[WorldFrame B]
    end
    World -. "auto-cloned + synced" .-> VA
    World -. "auto-cloned + synced" .-> VB

Loading

Add anything new to World at runtime — it appears in every portal's viewport automatically. Remove it — it disappears. The Camera, Terrain, and any character registered via addCharacter / trackAllPlayers are excluded automatically so they don't double-render.

Three layers

The library is composable. Most consumers only need PortalGroup. The lower layers are useful on their own — PortalWindow is a generic "magic window" (security cameras, fish tanks, magic mirrors).

PortalGroup — many portals, one render loop

Auto-discovers tagged portal parts via CollectionService, shares one RenderStepped callback across all of them.

const group = new PortalGroup({
  autoDiscoverTag: "ImmersivePortal",
  pairAttribute: "PortalPair",
  faceAttribute: "PortalFace", // optional integer NormalId per part
  defaultPortalConfig: { teleportCooldown: 0.2 }, // applied to every discovered pair
});
group.enableAutoDiscovery();
group.setWorld(Workspace.World);
group.trackAllPlayers();
group.bind();

Portal — paired teleporter

Two parts → two PortalWindows plus the mirror-camera loop and teleport check.

const portal = new Portal(partA, partB, {
  surfaceA: Enum.NormalId.Front,
  surfaceB: Enum.NormalId.Front,
  teleportCooldown: 0.1,
});
portal.setWorld(Workspace.PortalScene);
portal.setHumanoid(Players.LocalPlayer.Character!.FindFirstChildOfClass("Humanoid"));
portal.addCharacter(Players.LocalPlayer.Character!);
portal.teleported.Connect((from, to) => print(`${from} → ${to}`));
portal.bind();

bind() is only for standalone usage. Inside a PortalGroup, the group owns the render loop and calls Portal.update directly — don't bind individually.

PortalWindow — render primitive

A perspective-correct ViewportFrame on a part face. Standalone-useful.

const window = PortalWindow.fromPart(part, Enum.NormalId.Front, part, {
  canvasSize: new Vector2(1024, 1024),
  lightingMode: "snapshot",
});
window.setSkybox(Lighting.FindFirstChildOfClass("Sky"));
window.cloneInto([Workspace.OtherRoom]);

RunService.RenderStepped.Connect(() => {
  const cam = Workspace.CurrentCamera;
  if (cam) window.render(cam.CFrame);
});

Setup checklist

Two things that will trip you up:

1. Both portal parts need tag = "ImmersivePortal" and a matching PortalPair attribute for auto-discovery. The library waits until both halves are tagged to actually build the portal.
2. The SurfaceGui ends up under PlayerGui, not on the part. ViewportFrame content silently fails to render when the SurfaceGui is a direct child of a BasePart — only flat Frames render in that case. PortalWindow.fromPart handles this for you (Adornee = part, parent = LocalPlayer.PlayerGui, ResetOnSpawn = false).

Edge cases

Front face only

The library mounts the visible viewport on each part's Front face by default. Walk-through detection is bidirectional (you can enter from either face), but the back face renders as the bare part. Aim Front toward where players approach. Override per-part via the PortalFace integer attribute (a NormalId enum value).

Character cloning timing

Player.CharacterAdded fires before body parts and accessories replicate. Calling addCharacter immediately clones a Shirt+Humanoid stub. trackAllPlayers() does the right thing (waits for Humanoid, HumanoidRootPart, and CharacterAppearanceLoaded). If you wire it manually, do the same.

Tag stripping on clones

cloneInto strips CollectionService tags from every clone it produces. ViewportFrame contents are display-only; leaving tags on them re-fires GetInstanceAddedSignal for the auto-discovery layer and cascades into exponential portal creation. If you need tagged clones for some reason, re-tag them inside cloneFunc.

World can be a Folder or Model

Pass anything; cloneInto recurses its children. Top-level ChildAdded/ChildRemoved are auto-synced. Deep additions (descendants of an already-cloned subtree) are NOT — call setWorld again to re-snapshot.

Stateful effects are skipped

Sound, ParticleEmitter, Beam, and Trail instances on cloned characters/scenery are skipped during clone. Sounds in particular would otherwise freeze in their current Playing state (no Humanoid to update them) and produce ghost footstep loops.

Remote-player teleport smoothing

Local-player teleport is instant (direct HumanoidRootPart.CFrame assignment). Other players' characters interpolate over Roblox's ~100ms character network smoothing — no engine API disables this. Listen for portal.teleported and broadcast a server-side snap if you need pixel-perfect remote teleports.

Lighting

ViewportFrames don't render Atmosphere, Clouds, or Sky natively. The library provides a manual skybox proxy and exposes lightingMode:

Mode	When to use
"snapshot" (default)	Sample Lighting.OutdoorAmbient, Lighting.ColorShift_Top, and Lighting:GetSunDirection() once at construction. Best out-of-the-box match to the surrounding world.
"manual"	You set ambient + lightColor + sunDirection yourself. Most predictable.
"live"	Re-sample each frame. Use for day-night cycles. Slight cost per window.

Limitations

No post-processing in viewports

Expect the portal view to look flatter than the main render. ViewportFrame does not run any post-processing — no bloom, sun rays, depth of field, color correction, atmosphere scattering, or tonemapping — even when those effects are present in the parent place's Lighting. The library samples the three lighting inputs a ViewportFrame does support (Ambient, LightColor, LightDirection) and that's the ceiling Roblox gives us. A portal in a place with heavy atmosphere/bloom will read noticeably darker and less saturated than the world around it; no engine-supported workaround exists. Pre-multiplying LightColor to compensate just blows out highlights without restoring the missing effects, so the library intentionally doesn't do that — set expectations rather than fight the renderer.

No nested-portal recursion

The Portal-game effect of one portal looking through itself into an infinite tunnel is not possible in Roblox. ViewportFrame doesn't render nested GUIs — if a partner portal part is visible in the cloned world, you see its bare geometry, not its viewport graphic. Roblox exposes no offscreen-render-to-texture or feedback-pass primitive, so true recursion can't be faked. Treat partner portals in view as flat surfaces.

API surface

Classes: PortalWindow, Portal, PortalGroup

Pure functions:

• createSkyboxModel(sky | config) — Sky or SkyboxConfig → 6-part skybox Model
• mirrorCFrameForCamera(cf, planeA, planeB), mirrorCFrameForTeleport(cf, planeA, planeB)
• rayPlane(origin, direction, planePoint, planeNormal)
• segmentCrossesRect(from, to, planeCFrame, planeSize) (one-way; used for camera-through-portal)
• segmentCrossesRectBidirectional(from, to, planeCFrame, planeSize) (used for teleport)
• snapshotLighting(), resolveLighting(config), applyLightingToFrame(frame, snapshot)

Types: WindowConfig, PortalConfig, PortalGroupConfig, SkyboxConfig, LightingMode, LightingSnapshot

License

MIT