Creating a 2D Circular Mesh in Unity

Question

I currently have a \"CreateMesh\" script that can be put as a component of an object with a Mesh Renderer, and a Mesh Filter, and a 2D mesh is created with a polygon collider in

Answer 1

The solution I've managed to find involves creating a regular polygon of n sides with a large value of n. I have a function called PolyMesh which creates a regular polygon mesh with n sides and a given radius.

Generating the vertices

For each vertex of a regular polygon with n sides the coordinates relative to the centre of the polygon are given by x = r*i*sin(θ) and y = r*i*cos(θ) so therefore x = r*i*sin(2π/2) and y = r*i*cos(2π/2). Where i iterates from 0 to n-1. We can therefore have a list which has vertices assigned to it and then is converted to an array afterwards:

    //verticies
    List verticiesList = new List { };
    float x;
    float y;
    for (int i = 0; i < n; i ++)
    {
        x = radius * Mathf.Sin((2 * Mathf.PI * i) / n);
        y = radius * Mathf.Cos((2 * Mathf.PI * i) / n);
        verticiesList.Add(new Vector3(x, y, 0f));
    }
    Vector3[] verticies = verticiesList.ToArray();

Generating the triangles

A given regular polygon of n sides can be split into n-2 triangles from the same point. So we can generate each triangle as follows:

    //triangles
    List trianglesList = new List { };
    for(int i = 0; i < (n-2); i++)
    {
        trianglesList.Add(0);
        trianglesList.Add(i+1);
        trianglesList.Add(i+2);
    }
    int[] triangles = trianglesList.ToArray();

Generating the Normals

Since this is a 2d object we can have every normal as -Vector3.forward like so:

    //normals
    List normalsList = new List { };
    for (int i = 0; i < verticies.Length; i++)
    {
        normalsList.Add(-Vector3.forward);
    }
    Vector3[] normals = normalsList.ToArray();

Generating the collider

We could just use a circle collider with the same radius but in order to make this function work for a polygon of a smaller value of n we must use a PolygonCollider2D. Since the vertices are already in order in the vertices array we can simply use them as the paths for our PolygonCollider2D.

    //polyCollider
    polyCollider.pathCount = 1;

    List pathList = new List { };
    for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
    {
        pathList.Add(new Vector2(verticies[i].x, verticies[i].y));
    }
    Vector2[] path = pathList.ToArray();

    polyCollider.SetPath(0, path);

The complete code should look like this:

public PolygonCollider2D polyCollider;

void Start()
{
    polyCollider = GetComponent();
}

void PolyMesh(float radius, int n)
{
    MeshFilter mf = GetComponent();
    Mesh mesh = new Mesh();
    mf.mesh = mesh;

    //verticies
    List verticiesList = new List { };
    float x;
    float y;
    for (int i = 0; i < n; i ++)
    {
        x = radius * Mathf.Sin((2 * Mathf.PI * i) / n);
        y = radius * Mathf.Cos((2 * Mathf.PI * i) / n);
        verticiesList.Add(new Vector3(x, y, 0f));
    }
    Vector3[] verticies = verticiesList.ToArray();

    //triangles
    List trianglesList = new List { };
    for(int i = 0; i < (n-2); i++)
    {
        trianglesList.Add(0);
        trianglesList.Add(i+1);
        trianglesList.Add(i+2);
    }
    int[] triangles = trianglesList.ToArray();

    //normals
    List normalsList = new List { };
    for (int i = 0; i < verticies.Length; i++)
    {
        normalsList.Add(-Vector3.forward);
    }
    Vector3[] normals = normalsList.ToArray();

    //initialise
    mesh.vertices = verticies;
    mesh.triangles = triangles;
    mesh.normals = normals;

    //polyCollider
    polyCollider.pathCount = 1;

    List pathList = new List { };
    for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
    {
        pathList.Add(new Vector2(verticies[i].x, verticies[i].y));
    }
    Vector2[] path = pathList.ToArray();

    polyCollider.SetPath(0, path);
}

An introduction to meshes