Cloner

Stamps copies of its content across a set of points — the way to place many instances (a grid of spheres, particles over a mesh's surface) without authoring each one by hand.

Declarative element: <sk-cloner>

Global: available as sk.Cloner inside a scene <script>.

Remarks

The cloner is a SceneNode that instances geometry on the GPU: it takes what to clone from its content children (any clonable node — a mesh, a spline) and where to place them from a points-source. One points-source and one small template become thousands of positioned copies, and when the points-source changes the clones follow automatically.

Key attributes. mode chooses how clones are drawn: object renders each as a full instance (its own transform, pickable), vertex merges them into one particle-like batch that is cheaper at high counts. clone-scale uniformly resizes every clone. align-to-normal orients clones to the source surface's normal (with alignment-axis selecting which local axis points along it) — useful for studding a surface. illumination-min-scale / illumination-max-scale size clones by how much light they receive.

Related. The points-source child decides the layout: sk-grid-points-source for a lattice, sk-mesh-vertex-points-source to sit on a mesh's vertices, and the other *-points-source shapes. To drive each clone individually on the GPU (push them from a point, weight them by a field) add a sk-simple-point-constraint — the per-clone counterpart to the single-node constraints.

Constructor

constructor(config?: { pointsSource?: PointsSource; mode?: ClonerMode; alignToNormal?: boolean; applyScale?: boolean; alignmentAxis?: AlignmentAxis | AxisOrientation; cloneScale?: number; illuminationEnabled?: boolean; illuminationMinScale?: number; illuminationMaxScale?: number; illuminationUseShadows?: boolean; reportBounds?: boolean; overlay?: boolean; overlayOccludedOpacity?: number; id?: string; x?: number; y?: number; z?: number; h?: number; p?: number; b?: number; quaternion?: Quaternion; sx?: number; sy?: number; sz?: number; s?: number; class?: string; style?: string })

Inherited from: SceneNode, SkenraAnimatable — see those pages for inherited members.

Properties

Config Properties

Other Properties

Methods

Example

// Place small spheres at each vertex of a larger sphere
const baseSphere = new Sphere({ id: 'base', radius: 2, segments: 2 });
const pointsSource = new MeshVertexPointsSource({ mesh: baseSphere });

const cloner = new Cloner({ id: 'cloner',
    pointsSource,
    alignToNormal: true,
    cloneScale: 1
});

// Add the content to clone as a child
const dotSphere = new Sphere({ id: 'dot', radius: 0.1 });
cloner.appendChild(dotSphere);

scene.appendChild(cloner);

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