Implementing a new Skinnig algorithm with a plugin

Questions & Answers
1

Hi, Unity people.

I want to implement a new skinning method that I have developed during my Ph. D., the method is based in the classic LBS(Linear Blending Skinning) algortihm but it does not generate the well known “candy wrap” artifact when a twist rotation is performed over the link axys of a character’s limb.

I have developed sucessfully a plugin in Autodesk Maya (a deformer) implementing the deform algorithm, and I believe thta it would be great if I can implement a version for unity via a plugin.

I had read the documentation but I dont know if a new deform algortithm could be implemented an used via a C++ plugin, in a similar fashion of the deformers in Maya.

Could this be possible?

If it is:

where I can find/read documentation about it?

Sorry about my poor use of the english, is not my mother language…

Greetings.

2

To run something like this in Unity in real time, what you’re going to want to write is not a plugin, but a shader. The Shaders are used to transform mesh data on the GPU in real-time, which is what would be necessary in a game environment. If you wrote it in C++ or something similar, it would only be able to run on the CPU, which would then require the vertex data to be sent to the GPU every frame, causing massive slowdowns in the pipeline. The Learn section of this site, and the script reference have some great resources for learning to write shaders.