☑ Twisting a solid object

Help & Support
1

Hi,

What would be the best way to do twisting of an object? I’m creating a mechanical engineering lesson on torsion and would like to show a twisting effect of a solid cylinder.

-ikel

2

Twist in 3D editor.
In 3Ds max you can use modification twist

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If you need to control your twisting, you can listen to Nickelback and animate your model. Afterwards, you can move between frames to change angle.

1 Like
3

I think the options are:

  • Create your mesh in Blender/3DS Max/Maya and skin it and then just rotate the bones along their direction to twist the mesh. Either do this with a keyframed animation created in the art tool, or by animating bones in script procedurally.
  • Write a custom shader to twist vertices of a mesh along a vector. You can do this by:
    • Writing vertex/fragment shaders from scratch. I can’t think of an Editor-based project that implements something like this but here’s an ‘Engine-only’ example which could be translated to the Editor very easily.
    • Writing a shader chunk to override the default vertex transform of the pc.StandardMaterial. This system isn’t officially API yet but there’s quite a few examples out there showing how the system works.

Unfortunately, you can’t do this with morph target animation (sometimes called ‘blend shapes’) - PlayCanvas doesn’t support this yet. But we do have an issue open if you’re interested to track this feature.

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4

I use Blender and able to do the same thing. I’m sorry, I wasn’t clear in the first place. I’s like to show a real time deformation.

Thanks for the 3DS Max suggestion.

5

Thanks! I’d go with the first option. Why didn’t I think of that! Very smart indeed.

1 Like
6

Any news on the " * Writing a shader chunk to override the default vertex transform of the pc.StandardMaterial. This system isn’t officially API yet but there’s quite a few examples out there showing how the system works."-part?