How should I store effectively a mesh on an Component?

Unity Engine
,
1

I’ve done a lot of research and even used to dabble in ECS back in 2015 but the implementation of ECS in Unity is a little bit different.

I’d like to store mesh triangles on a component attached to an entity. This means three points as well as some other info that comes out the other end. As I understand it, you can’t store arrays so my options are.

1: Attach hundreds of triangles as components to a single entity. The triangle points must be updated ever frame to world space. So a system would do that
2: Have a system that holds the parent mesh and then applies based on the entity it is associated with. I don’t like this because it detaches the data (which is a bunch of triangles) from the entity that it is associated with. Each entity will probably have a different mesh so they can’t be shared.

The idea is that you take a triangle. Calculate a bunch of info on it and then return that info and combine it to output some forces.

Any help would be appreciated!

2

You can store array in the form of DynamicBuffers. Dynamic Buffers | Package Manager UI website

[InternalBufferCapacity(0)]
public struct VertexElement : IBufferElementData {
    public static implicit operator float3(VertexElement e) { return e.Value; }
    public static implicit operator VertexElement(float3 e) { return new VertexElement { Value = e }; }

    public float3 Value;
}

[InternalBufferCapacity(0)]
public struct NormalElement : IBufferElementData {
    public static implicit operator float3(NormalElement e) { return e.Value; }
    public static implicit operator NormalElement(float3 e) { return new NormalElement { Value = e }; }

    public float3 Value;
}

[InternalBufferCapacity(0)]
public struct TriangleElement : IBufferElementData {
    public static implicit operator int(TriangleElement e) { return e.Value; }
    public static implicit operator TriangleElement(int e) { return new TriangleElement { Value = e }; }

    public int Value;
}
1 Like
3

Awesome, thanks for pointing me towards that!