Building Procedural Node-Based Mesh Framework In Unity

Learn more about Viktor Grigorev's project.

Viktor Grigorev spent weeks rebuilding his mesh boolean system in Unity from the ground up because the first version wasn't reliable enough. The goal of this project is to create a procedural mesh system for Unity with a custom data structure, a fast Burst-powered backend, and a node-based editor. The system also keeps important mesh data, like materials and attributes, intact while objects are being edited by tracking how each part was created. Also, it supports optimized packed primitives designed for efficient GPU instancing.

The idea is to make runtime mesh editing easier, things like slicing, customization, destruction, or use as a procedural modeling tool inside the Editor.

Victor is planning to release the nodes as an asset on the Unity Asset Store, while some core parts of the mesh may be open-sourced. He is also sharing development updates through his dev blog, where you can follow the progress and learn more about the project. If there are any specific features you'd like to see, you can reach out and let him know.

"The new kernel is built on Manifold's approach. I narrowed the domain while I was at it: it works on manifolds and doesn't try to heal dirty input. What I get back for that is a kernel that's simpler, more predictable, and something like a hundred times faster than the old one.

Some of the machinery is ported straight from Manifold. Then I built my own stuff around it: n-gon reconstruction on the output, and attribute transfer from both operands through provenance. The operation set grew, too. On top of union, intersection, and subtraction, there's now a non-destructive cut (Seam), trimming a surface with a solid (Trim), and shattering into tagged pieces (Shatter). Open geometry, like a grid cut by a box, became a first-class input, similar to what SideFX does in Houdini, just simpler for now."

Manifold is a Boolean operations library. You can check out an example benchmark to see how it performs here.

Also, have a look at Ok_Art_2784's Gerstner water system, and if you're interested in water in Unity, Fabrizio Espindola recently announced a new course on the topic.

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