Introduction

Thanks for picking up Spline Juice.

Spline Juice is a visual-only spline mesh deformer for Unreal Engine. It bends, squashes, and stretches your meshes along an editable spline using World Position Offset (WPO), so the geometry travels, follows the curve, and squash-stretches like cartoon “juice”, while the actual actor transform, mesh components, and collision never move.

Real transform / collision  →  stays exactly where it is
Visual surface (WPO)        →  flows, squashes, stretches along the spline

Because the whole effect lives in the material’s World Position Offset, it’s purely cosmetic and fully reversible: at rest the mesh sits in its original pose, untouched.

What it does

Path travel: slide a mesh along a spline from start to rest.
Spline-follow rotation: the surface banks and turns to follow the curve.
Squash & stretch: cartoon stretch along a chosen axis, with optional volume preservation.
Size over time: inflate or shrink the mesh as it travels.
Assembly along the spline (optional): a multi-part mesh that explodes into pieces and re-assembles as it moves.

Everything is driven by editable curves, so the timing and shape of the motion are entirely art-directed.

What’s covered

Getting Started: add the component, generate a deform material, and see it move.
The Settings Panel: the tabbed editor window and live preview.
Behavior & Tuning: the travel, stretch, and size curves, plus the deformation options.
Assembly Along the Spline: splitting a mesh into pieces and the explode → settle effect.
Reusable Templates: capture a look once and share it across many actors.
Playback & Blueprint: driving the animation at runtime and reacting to events.
Material Contract: reference for hooking the effect into your own materials.
Troubleshooting: answers to the most common gotchas.