Indexed Face Set animation and shading

I’m considering doing a project like this: FreeWRL flowers4.x3d - YouTube in PlayCanvas. I already have done a project like this with a static model. I was wondering how animating an indexed face set worked in playcanvas. Are there docs? I was thinking of using JavaScript since I already have code, but I have no clue how to access the model/asset. Assistance or direction would be welcome. Do I need to do all the animation in Blender first? Thanks!

Hi @yottzumm, there are few approaches you can tackle this nice challenge:

  1. Animations - you will have to prepare all animations in your favourite modelling tool (Blender, 3Ds Max, Maya, etc). You will need to use bones, as per-vertex animations are not supported.
  2. Math - you can actually create generic high poly shape, something like geodesic sphere (my favourite spheres), and then use Vertex Shader and maths do position vertices to create in real-time interesting shapes like in that video. This option is quiet fast and does not need to download animations. And can be driven by uniforms, so you can dynamically play with geometry as you need.

In terms of a look and feel, you can use prefiltere cubemap as skybox, and default material with high gloss factor and probably high metalness too.

Thanks max, check this out: https://playcanvas.com/project/370389/overview/the-blob-in-st-peters wd

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Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf934iHqHtk

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Dude, that looks really cool!
Some weirdness happens there with normals I guess, but you’ve cracked nicely the vertex shader solution, which makes it very fast and smooth even on mobile.