Spline tool: paths, roads and more

[AggrorJorn]

This video demonstrates the usage of straight lines. They can be used for camera paths, camera on rails, Vr camera on rails, rollercoasters, factory production lines, Transitional animation between 2 objects.

 

 

In the next video I will show how I make curved splines.

[DooMAGE]

Thank you for the video

[AggrorJorn]

Splines are coming along nicely. How great would it be to have this in-editor!

 

 

[tipforeveryone]

Those curves look gorgeous Jorn !!

[burgelkat]

This would be very helpful if it were in the editor

[AggrorJorn]

Got distracted this evening when I found these models of powerline towers. Although totally not the intention when I started making these camera path splines, but I just realised how much more I can do with these things. It is very usefull for creating ropes and cables as it turns out. there is always more to do....

 

Powerlines

[tipforeveryone]

Keep up the good work !!

[Charrua]

nice

 

has you found a way of getting constant speed over the spline?

 

are you using some criteria for placing control points based on endpoints?

i mean, you only set the endpoints and then pre-calculate based on them the control points, then manually adjust the ones that need adjustment...hope you understand my question.

[AggrorJorn]

Wont be able to record a video in the week to come, so a temporary screenshot will have to do.

 

The splines themselves are done, but the animation rotation and alignment need some tweaking.

[psychoanima]

It would be great to have this inside Leadwerks! That could solve missing cutscene feature.

[martyj]

Oh man that would be great for the editor. I'm having to add a bunch of pivots to do a similar functionality, and it is terrible as far as keeping track of things.

[psychoanima]

Is this going to be publicly available when you finish final tweaking?

[AggrorJorn]

Eventually I want to make this available for a few dollar on the workshop store. When I am done make the refinements I want to get some feedback first on missing features and after beta testing it goes live.

[AggrorJorn]

okay good news and bad news.

 

Good news: Once the basic tutorials for Lua are done, I will pick this up again.

 

Bad news: I made this project on my old computer. I always use bibtbucket for my repositories. The repository was not yet downloaded to my new computer. I cloned the repo to my new computer but found out that it only contained a bare leadwerks project.

As it turns out: the code for pathing and beziers was not stored in this repository . Apparently all code resided in a temporary project which I did not store in a repository. Since I though it was just a test project I completely removed it from my old computer before moving to my new computer. *Smashes head against wall.

 

Luckily I know how it works now, so I will have a headstart when rewriting everything.

[Charrua]

ahh, starting over, again and again

is a bad, repeated sensation that, i guess all here know

wish you luck

[AggrorJorn]

7 months after the original video I finally picked up my spirit again to redo the spline paths. The splines themselves are created at runtime. With the debugging options enabled you can really see the cool results of the spline. Movement on the spline still has some slight hickups at high speeds. So that is something I have to dig into. Rotation has yet to be added. Especially banking gave me a lot of trouble last time. I will try to make a video tomorrow when I have the time.

 

 

Road nodes 

The spline paths can also be used to create roads. The roads can cut through or raise terrain where necessary. Per road node you can set the width and a texture. Remaining things to do are side banks, performance optimization and possibly intersections.

 

 

 

[AggrorJorn]

Spline paths with physics. Using the 4.4 kinematic joints we get very stable physics movement. Ideal for platform or trains (think Halflife intro)

Also a big thanks to @Phodex Games for the cool intro.

 

 

 

[burgelkat]

Very cool i see my train and the Waggons drive correct in the Future

[AggrorJorn]

Closing in on the release date. Only 2 more days.

• Road generation has been optimized a lot. 
• Example scenes are ready.
• Side geometry: banks

Todo:

• Terrain alignment still needs some work. Odd scenarios
• Sometimes textures get strange artifacts.
• Rotation mode: spline alignment is not as smooth yet.

 

 

[AggrorJorn]

Spline tools are donem and ready for the workshop. Just waiting for confirmation now. In the mean time I will start writing some documentation.

[Thirsty Panther]

Will the 3rd person script be released at the same time?

[AggrorJorn]

Unfortunately no. The controls, movement and rotation are done for a while now but I still need to find a decent (free) test model with lots of animations. I think people would expect an animated character with the third person script and I want to release it with a flexible character animator component.

[randomdude]

Oh Jorn I can make one if you want. I´m a pro on animating by now and have a big load of bvh´s. I just need to know what animations you need.

[AggrorJorn]

10 minutes ago, randomdude said:

Oh Jorn I can make one if you want. I´m a pro on animating by now and have a big load of bvh´s. I just need to know what animations you need.

Awesome   If you help me out with that you'll get a free copy of the script. I will send you a pm.

[randomdude]

Thats what I wanted to here. Just joking, Its a pleasure your camscript is still in use and I did awesome stuff with it so its not necessary. Sure write me an PM and we are fine.