Needle Actor

Needle actor is an extension of the Rigidbody, but with additional properties for a needle. It can be used along with the Puncturable component to simulate needle punctures in soft deformable objects. In order to create a needle actor, you need to:

  1. Create a NeedleActor and Assign a Physics World.

    Create an empty GameObject and add a NeedleActor component to it by clicking Add Component > MAGES > Mesh Deformations > Medical > Needle Actor in the inspector

    ../../../_images/AddComponentNeedleActor.PNG

    Assign a Physics World to the NeedleActor component

    ../../../_images/NeedleActorInspector.PNG

  2. Press Edit Particles in the inspector to edit particles in the Scene view.

    Instructions

    • Left click: make particles kinematic.

    • Shift + left click: make particles non-kinematic.

    • Alt + drag: marquee-select particles and make them kinematic.

    • Shift + Alt + drag: marquee-select particles and make them non-kinematic.

    Particle Ledger

    • Red: kinematic.

    • Green: non-kinematic.

    • Blue: selected.

    Configuration Settings

    • Particle scale: How big particles are, helping with the visualization.

    • Particle count: How many particles show. Restricting the number of particles shown can help with performance when editing large meshes.

    ../../../_images/ledger.png

    Marquee Selection can help you select multiple particles at once. You can hold the Alt key and drag to marquee-select particles and make them kinematic, or hold Shift + Alt and drag to marquee-select particles and make them non-kinematic.

    ../../../_images/kinematic_marqee.gif

  3. Configure the needle points.

    Instead of using a Simulation Mesh like most of the other actor types, the Needle Actor uses a list of points to define the needle shape. Add points to the needle by clicking the ‘+’ button in the inspector and assign the transform of each point:

    ../../../_images/needle-points.PNG

    Based on these points a Simulation Mesh will be generated automatically.

    Note

    The first needle point will be used as the needle tip.

  4. Render the needle.

    To render the needle, you can add a MeshFilter and a MeshRenderer component to the GameObject and assign a mesh to the MeshFilter and a Material to the MeshRenderer.

    Note

    The mesh assigned to the MeshFilter should be aligned with the needle points in order for the collisions to be accurate.