Real Time Mesh Elasticity

Development Character & Animation
1

(If this is in the wrong subforum, please move it.)

Hey guys. I’m trying to do something a little ambitious and am trying to think of the best way to go about it within the confines of the UE4 engine. What I would like to do is have a sphere, when it drops, actually deform as if it were a real ball before bouncing back up into the air.

I’ve thought of a couple possibilities for doing this. One is to generate a deformation map every tick based on collision data, then when there are no more collisions, begin to revert the map at an x rate (IE, when the ball begins moving back in the other direction after the impulse and velocity switch). Downside to this method is that I’d also have to calculate for the reverse compression where the ball deforms on itself on the way back up as well. Another possibility is somehow using the morph target system, though I’m not sure how well that would work.

Anyone have any ideas on this?

2

And what about with teselated material?. Iv been thinking for posible ways to achieve that. and one of the thougt was creating some kind of teselated material wich react with the physics. but i dont know if its posible and veven then it will be probably pretty hard performance.

3

Look in the Content Examples of Epic under Blueprint Advanced.
You´ll find a jumping ball with deformation.

4

While that would technically work, it defeats the spirit of the exercise as it deforms the entire mesh at once. I’m looking at vertex level deformation.