#I want to have them move around on the
finite cave
Okay so it's way more tricky 🙂
I can suggest 3 methods that all have their Pro and Cons
fallow salmon
Alright. I didn't expect it to be easy.. I'm all ears!
finite cave
First one would be to use Signed Distance Fields.
You would spawn particles on the Surface of the Skinned Mesh thanks to the Built-in Block of VFXG:
and from their you 'll need to use SDF conform or other custom force to + Curl Noise to crawl on th esurface
The tricky part is to be able to get "Animated SDF (Signed distance field)
For this I would suggest you to take a look at this repo:
https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/com.unity.demoteam.mesh-to-sdf
It allow you to Create SDF Realtime.
Do you want me to share the others methods?
fallow salmon
Thanks! What are the pros and cons using this method?
finite cave
Well , the Pro, is that it's pretty easy to setup in VFXGraph. And you can built-in Node for getting 99% of the behavior you're after. Also it should scale well
The con: You need to get you're hand a little bit dirty and go on Github to get the Tool from the Unity Demo team.
Also the listed Github Repo is good for Medium size meshes and might not be suited for large mesh.
Accuracy isn't perfect, as you want it to regenerate the SDF each frame..
Also there's several limitation to this SDF baker that you can find here:
https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/com.unity.demoteam.mesh-to-sdf/blob/main/Documentation~/index.md
fallow salmon
I see.. The cons don't sound terrible.. I'll give it a shot and if it doesn't quite work, could I ask you later for the other methods?
finite cave
Sure. I'll be in vacation so not sure that I will be very fast to answer...
but I've created a very fast tutorials about the other method.. But the tutorial is for Niagara:
https://vimeo.com/422563478
But Everything is doable in VFXGraph
The idea is to Create a "Proxy Skinned Mesh" with Curve/Path along the Geo:
This Proxy Mesh can be seen as Skinned Crawling Path
But as it's path you can easily "Order" the triangle Indexes
Here is the Proxy Mesh creation setup in Houdini:
https://vimeo.com/421287349
After this in VFXGraph the idea is to sample this Proxy Mesh. In Order and Create a Point Attractor that will travel along the Crawling path...
I've been able to get very cool results with this approach but it's evolving some DCC setups
HAve fun 🙂
fallow salmon
Really cool effects you got with those methods. Thanks a bunch for the assistance
finite cave
This is an "basic" crawling example to get you started. But this SDF is "Static".
This way you just have to figure out how the Realtime SDF of the Github Repo is working.
Hope it will help you @fallow salmon
fallow salmon
oh! Thanks again!
I've been messing around with the realtime SDF of the github repo. It's a bit weird to get working, but it does do what I want it to, which is good!
finite cave
Cool. I'm glad that you've been able to make it work