This is a Blender Addon for structural analysis of 3D frames and trusses. Its primary use is for quickly generating bent structures for visual purposes - for instance, for modelling light structures that are made of materials such as wood or bamboo etc, and are bending under their own weight. Primarily, such structures are of use in game level design, but there are other uses as well.

You want to model a decrepit old log cabin in the woods, skewing down from the steady unforgiving winds? A simple beach shack made of bamboo sticks? If you ever want to give any kind of frame/truss that bending look of an old decrepit improvised hut that's just about to collapse, Matchstick is for you.

Matchstick takes a coarse, "skeletal" mesh as input - a mesh that just consists of edges, each of which stands for a single wood log or beam, and outputs a displaced skeletal mesh, as well as a textured curve or mesh with user-specified radius. Those vertices that were previously selected in Edit mode are viewed as vertices to be displaced.

Matchstick does not just "fake" the bending. Instead, it performs a real structural analysis and achieves its effect by applying nodal displacements and rotations to your input mesh! Each edge will generate a curve. Cross-sections are assumed to be circular, and material parameters (Young's modulus etc) are those of typical timber. There even is a "physically correct" input parameter. If set, it turns off all pre-scaling and applies the correct bending characteristics with the specified radius. The members are modeled as bent structures but the joints are assumed to be firm enough to withstand torque forces.

Without the "physically correct" setting, the displacement scaling can be manually tweaked easily to achieve the desired look.

Particular emphasis has been placed on performance, and ease of use. Per vertex, the structural analysis takes not longer than a few microseconds (not milli)!

The output mesh is textured with a node-based material that you can further modify in order to achieve PBR quality.

Dev Fund Contributor
Published	almost 2 years ago
Software Version	3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4
License	Mit

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