Copy animated skeletal mesh to procedural mesh at runtime

Development Programming & Scripting C++
1

I have a character in my game with an animation blueprint and morph targets.

Is there a way to copy the animated skeletal mesh to a procedural mesh that updates at run time?

The result would be a procedural mesh clone of the animated skeletal mesh with collision (really it’s just the collision I’m interested in).

I found a few things that were interesting but I’m still a bit stuck. There is a way to get the skeletal mesh vertex locations and normals in C++ but so far I’ve had no luck with it.

This post on the answer hub is useful https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/95381/cant-seem-to-get-uskeletalmeshcomponentgetskinnedv.html?sort=oldest

But I’m having trouble getting this code to compile.

CalcBoneVertInfos is giving me “identifier is undefined”, although I am including MeshUtilities.h

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2

I managed to get the animated vertex positions of the mesh, but I can’t find the triangles and normals needed for the procedural mesh generation. Been searching for aaaages for a solution, did anyone else manage to do this?

3

So I can get the normals now too!!! but the triangles are nowhere to be found!!! Agh!! help meeeee!!

4

Here is the code to get this to work
FSkeletalMeshRenderData* datarender = meshroot->GetSkeletalMeshRenderData();

FSkeletalMeshLODRenderData& dataarray = datarender->LODRenderData[0];
int32 a = dataarray.RenderSections[0].NumVertices;
for (int32 i = 0; i < a; i++)
{
    FVector b = dataarray.StaticVertexBuffers.PositionVertexBuffer.VertexPosition(i);
    VerticesArray.Add(b);
    FVector c = dataarray.StaticVertexBuffers.StaticMeshVertexBuffer.VertexTangentZ(i);
    normals.Add(c);
    FVector2D d = dataarray.StaticVertexBuffers.StaticMeshVertexBuffer.GetVertexUV(i, 0);
    UV.Add(d);
}



FMultiSizeIndexContainerData indicesData;
dataarray.MultiSizeIndexContainer.GetIndexBufferData(indicesData);
for (int32 i=0;i<indicesData.Indices.Num();i++)
{
    int32 a = 0; 
    UInt32ToInt32(indicesData.Indices*, &a);
    Tris.Add(a);
}
5

Wow thanks! I actually got this to work in the end, not sure if this is the same as my code though. Does it work with morph targets too?

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6

My code above only got vert position of the static mesh version of the skeletal mesh, u should use loop for the number of vertices and use mesh->GetSkinnedVertexPosition to get the skinned position, i did not try with morph target but i think i should work :D.

7

Actually got round to trying this today and it doesn’t include morph targets unfortunately. I’m sure there’s a way to do it though so I’ll keep looking.

8

Have you find the solution to create static mesh or procedural mesh from skeletal mesh with morph targets?

10

@Cosmik-Debris any progress about getting the morphed skeletal mesh position?

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