Sample for baking deformation to a texture then applying it to a mesh via a shader.

I saw Simon Trümpler's Tileable Liquid Mesh on Spline and I was wondering how the mesh was following the spline exactly. It gave me the idea of baking the deformation to a texture somehow, which actually turned out to be really simple.

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• Add the package to your Unity project (tips on how to install it are in the Installation section)
• Create the mesh you will be deforming that's pointing in the forward Z axis. Samples are provided.
  • Make sure it has a material with the Deformation Lookup Shader shader.
  • If the mesh does not start at (0, 0, 0) and stop at (0, 0, 1), adjust the Z Start and Z End properties accordingly.
• Implement the IDeformationProvider interface in the script that is responsible for the deformation that you want to bake or use the provided BezierSpline script.
• Add a DeformationTextureRenderer script to the scene. I recommend adding it next to the mesh you'll be deforming.
• Assign the script responsible for the deformation to the Deformation Provider field.
  • Assign the material for the mesh that will be deformed (this is necessary for assigning it dynamically created textures)
• You should now see the mesh deform along whatever deformation is provided via the script.

• If the mesh is not deforming, check that Amount is set to 1 in the material. This feature exists for quickly toggling the effect on and off to see what it does.
• If the mesh is not deforming, check that it has the right material, shader and texture assigned
• Make sure the correct texture asset and/or material are assigned in the Deformation Texture Renderer
• If you are seeing artifacts or incorrect deformation:
  • Make sure the resolution is sufficiently large. Set the mode to Dynamic and try out larger resolutions until the artifacts disappear
  • Make sure Z Start and Z End are set correctly in the material
  • Make sure the texture's wrap mode is set to clamp. For looping meshes you may want the X-axis to be set to Repeat

The package is available on the openupm registry. It's recommended to install it via openupm-cli.

openupm add com.roytheunissen.gpusplinedeformation

You can also install via git URL by adding this entry in your manifest.json

"com.roytheunissen.gpusplinedeformation": "https://github.com/RoyTheunissen/GPU-Spline-Deformation.git"

from Window->Package Manager, click on the + sign and Add from git: https://github.com/RoyTheunissen/GPU-Spline-Deformation.git

Roy Theunissen

roy.theunissen@live.nl

• Tileable Liquid Mesh on Spline, Simon Trümpler for the inspiration
• Curves and Splines, Catlike Coding for the spline implementation