drew-fc / characterclippingprotector

A unity tool to hide certain areas of character meshes and reduce the amount of clipping between clothing layers

Character Clipping Protector

A unity tool to reduce the amount of clipping between clothing layers and characters by hiding areas of the mesh which are occluded by outer layers.

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Works very well, small issues with certain areas such as armpits as described below.

Loading the Example:

• Download the project

• Open the Scene "Character Clipping Test Scene"

• Reset the meshes on the occlusion pawn to default

• Run the "Character Clipping Protector" - Check button - on "HumanMesh_WITHCLIPPINGPROTECTOR"

• Adjust the sliders for differing results

• Requires the packages: Burst, Jobs & Editor Coroutines

Strengths:

• Fast - could be potentially used sparingly realtime depending on the mesh

• Good coverage - Gets most areas and flat/slightly rounded surfaces

Weaknesses:

• Complex areas - Areas such as the armpits/ inner thighs can be an issue due to the huge variance in angles

• For large meshes will cause perforance isues

• Async- must be run in a coroutine

• Only setup for skinned meshes

Usage:

• DO NOT RUN in any pose other than T or A pose - will get varying results

• Setup a specific layer for testing occlusion and set this in the script

• In editor use the "check" option as described above to run the simulation

• To run from code simply set the meshes and then start the RunClippingSimulation coroutine (with optional callback when complete)

• Adjust margin to add "safety" margins where the edges of the mesh occur

Tips:

• ORDER MESHES in terms of layer with the lowest priority first in the inspector (see example)

• Split meshes up if required: The script will do a reasonable job on all areas but manual culling could be required in certain situations (split arms/legs/torso/head etc)

• Calculate all mesh combinations upfront in a loading phase and store the results with the "Caching" feature - will then allow quick culling later during gameplay

Method:

• Creates a seperate collider mesh to test against for each mesh

• Uses the new Raycast command to cast for each vertex on each mesh from the outside in

• Collects results and processes to find areas with overlap

• Creates a new mesh and hides areas with signigicant overlap

Debugging:

• Use the debug options on the tool to show either mesh hits (overlapping zones) or every raycast made.