(31-05-2021, 08:04 AM)josemendez Wrote: Imho, there's not much interest in using more particles than vertices for surface sampling. The reason is that the extra particles wouldn't aid much regarding deformation quality (skinning quality depends only on how many vertices your mesh has, and how many bone influences per vertex), collision detection, or performance (more particles = worse performance).
Maybe I'm not aware of a particular use case that would benefit from this?
It's a solution to a problem with Obi Softbody's surface blueprint generator. Surface blueprints only work well with organic models that have consistent vertex density across the entire model. I've attached a screenshot showing the geometry of the Barrel, Dragon, and Prism model from the sample folder. Look how regularly spaced all the vertices are on these models, they're designed to work well with Obi. It's very easy to generate surface blueprints with regular particle spacing using these and so connecting particles based on distance works very well.
The problem is that real game assets aren't usually built like this, they're optimised and vertex density varies from one part of the model to another. As a result, the surface blueprints generated can have big gaps and the particles won't be able to connect properly using distance. That's why I was thinking that either intermediate particles need to be created or there needs to be a much better way of connecting particles to neighbours than using distance.