Triplanar mapping for skeletal meshes without UV maps

I tried googling and seems to be a common topic, but I didn’t find a definitive answer.

Is it possible to do some sort of triplanar mapping for skeletal meshes without UV’s? Of course one that doesn’t swim on the mesh when it’s being animated or moved in the world.

short answer, no

you can do an object space triplanar projection but when animating it will “swim”.
you would have to do a per bone projection somehow and i’m not sure if that would be sufficient.

you can try baking out world space normals and using that texture as the triplanar coordinates but not sure if it will work…

Thank you for the confirmation. Also thanks for the idea about baking world space normals. No idea how to go about that, but will research it a bit.

Yes, it’s the Pre-Skinned Local Normal/Position nodes:

The Pre-Skinned Local Normals Vector Expression outputs a three-channel vector value representing the local surface normal for Skeletal and Static Meshes. This enables you to achieve locally-aligned tri-planar materials and mesh aligned effects in your materials.

Never used it, just know it from the docs.

Sounds useful, will have to investigate (shaders not my primary thing). If anyone has more info, ideas or tips, it would be appreciated.