- News
Static Mesh Hole Filling in Unreal Engine
- Game Development
Static Mesh Hole Filling in Unreal Engine
Master Thesis
Felix Wallquist
The subject involved implementing functionality in Unreal Engine 4.27 capable of detecting and filling surface holes on static meshes with the goal of having patched hole surfaces that are indistinguishable from the surrounding mesh. The work was done as part of my bachelor thesis at Piktiv.
The presentation mainly focused on the four integral parts of the functionality; hole detection, hole triangulation, refinement and fairing, but also gave insight into the problem area from where the idea for the implementation arose.
Conceptually, the process of the hole filling functionality consists of detecting all surface holes present on a mesh and triangulating those holes, creating initial patched surfaces. The patched surfaces are then refined with the purpose of mimicking the vertex density of the surrounding mesh. These refined surfaces are then faired, which is the process of smoothing out a surface with the purpose of restoring the curvature of the original mesh, previous to the introduction of the hole.
An analysis of the results was briefly discussed, along with possible areas of extensions for the functionality itself.
