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I have a mesh that looks like this:

enter image description here

enter image description here

Is there a way in Blender to flatten this mesh so that:

  • its thickness is preserved
  • the deformation of faces is minimized

In real life terms the process I'd like to obtain is the one by which you'd flatten parts of a rubber ball by putting a weight on it. It would give horizontally, but the thickness would stay the same(ish).

This picture kinda shows it:

enter image description here

but the fact that it's from a Siggraph paper doesn't give me much hope...

simone
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  • Hello :). Could you please add what you already tried to solve it? – jachym michal Sep 01 '21 at 11:21
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    @JachymMichal - HI! I tried shrinkwrapping on a plane, but it didn't work out. I can add that in the question if it helps. But my question could also be formulated as "what do you call a thing that does this" - often 70% of my problem is to find out what to google for, as I am new to Blender. Once I know, I'm usually on the way to a solution. – simone Sep 01 '21 at 11:27
  • Could you please add link to siggraph paper. Suggest the tennis ball is akin to a spherical UV mapping, keep one "peanut". Similarly a 2x1 plane can be warped into a sphere. 360 degrees one way and 180 the other. https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/24043/how-to-animate-morphing-a-rectangular-plane-into-a-sphere IIRC @moonboots has an answer re something similar. – batFINGER Sep 01 '21 at 15:21
  • LInk to siggraph paper: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kmcrane/Projects/VariationalCuts/?utm_source=pocket_mylist and another nice one: https://geometrycollective.github.io/boundary-first-flattening/?utm_source=pocket_mylist Also: I could let go of the thickness, but minimization of distortion of faces is important – simone Sep 01 '21 at 15:29

1 Answers1

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If you can reproduce the shape by adding Solidify Modifier to a one-sided mesh (no thickness), then you can just add shape keys and scale it to 0 on the second shape key. This doesn't retain volume:

Markus von Broady
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