3D features (visibility, change material, pose data API)

In working with Defold on 3D projects, there are three things I’ve noticed and can remember off the top of my head this morning.

It seems the only way to hide a 3D object is to delete it or move it very far away. As such I think it would be nice to change visibility (does enable/disable work like that for sprites?) or otherwise change the material and thereby change the predicate.

For example, in my current project there are walls that obscure the play area looking in, and it would be nice to hide their parent or change their material to reveal the play field depending on camera angle. (At the moment, I simply changed my design to only look in from one angle).

In the current system, changing material only seems possible in a practical-effects sort of way, of swapping models instantaneously… or, potentially better for performance but more cumbersome to maintain during development, creating one multipurpose material.

The third feature I’d like to see is setting skeleton pose data from Lua. Something like get/set for a table of quaternions making up the pose. This would allow procedural animation like inverse kinematics, head turning, and physics bits. I realize it’s a little more low-level of a feature than the rest of the animation engine (which is beautifully abstracted IMO) but would provide some versatility nonetheless.

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