Game Development Community

Bezier patch support

by Jesse McKinney · in Constructor · 04/29/2007 (11:59 am) · 1 replies

As Constructor is becoming more and more an end all solution for interior creation in Torque and we can now combine both models and bsp brushes into one single dif file one thing still remains missing that merges the ease of editing brushwork, with the smooth flowing look and feel of models. Yes my dear friends I am referring to Bezier patches. For a long time now other interior creation apps have utilized this feature and the look of nice curvy but smooth flowing surfaces is truly astonishing.
Some common Bezier Patch operations

Smooth walled tubes / pipes
Arches
Patch Meshes (grids of vertex that can be pushed and pulled much in the same way legacy terrain worked
Capping operations
bending, squashing, stretching, and twisting brushwork
Sculpting and lofting operations for very decorative but smooth pillars and other details
and quite a bit more but you get the idea.


Here is a good example of Bezier patches in use.
pipeline.fov120.com/shots/85_l3.jpg
Notice that the tube is round and yet you don't see any bsp brush break hard edges, that's because it was made with Bezier patches and Bezier patches are built around bezier curves not flat surfaces like standard brushwork is so you don't see breaks where a curve changes direction or switches orientation. So my question is this.

Is there a way to add Bezier patch editing support to Constructor? The ease of use of creating patch meshes and their relatively low performance overhead makes them an ideal candidate to be added into constructor and the TGEA engine in a future releases. Combine that with there looks and extremely versatile nature and we have one heck of an awesome tool for creating a wide variety of previously impossible to create geometry.

#1
05/02/2007 (2:09 pm)
Greetings!

Before Constructor can support Bezier patch built brushes it will have to be built into the Torque engines.

- LightWave Dave