To make it more clear what a user is doing I want to make a toggle to show a more ‘simplified’ look at the 3d model.

I can achieve the effect bij doing a Explode.apply(mesh, false) on the Mesh.

But my original mesh is 2809 vertices, and the exploded one is 15912 vertices… and this isn’t performing at all with my sculpting mechanism.

Is there a way to achieve this effect through something else than duplicating vertices with there own normals? So with lighting, shading or different materials?

First image is the normal Mesh with 2809 vertices, and the second image is the exploded mesh with 15912 vertices…

Hi

I dont think there is a option to display the hard-edges, without increasing the vert-count.
The light on a material is calculated using the vertex-normals, so neighbour-triangles that are sharing points, are displayed without hard-edges.

also your sculpting function will not work on a exploded mesh correctly, because the vertexNormals will be different for points that are on the same position. i think the scultping on a exploded mesh will result in disconnected triangles (gaps in your mesh).

I think the only possible way for this would be, to keep track of the original vertexNormals and map them to the new (exploded) verts. This way you could use the original normal for the calculation of the scultping, while having the exploded normals for the render.

Yes… I already had the sculpting working, and indeed exactly the way you desrcribed… but due to the vertice count, the performance dropped to unacceptable values.