Curved paths and splines

#1 Erm, to clarify, I mean 3d spline paths for stuff like camera and object paths.

Phil.

#2 There isn't any that I know of. Sounds like it would be a good addition though.

#3 Ok, I'll get on with that when I get the code..

#4 What are the benefits for curved paths?
Camera paths? object paths?

how bout curved surfaces? :)

http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=forums&page=result.thread&qt=948

I emailed the Quark guys and Q3radiant guys about finding someone interested in adding .dif support to one of these editors, Even if we cant get patch support, being able to export the patches as geometry would still be very handy.

As for splines, what about exporting them from 3dsmax?

#5 The point is that you can use a nice curve (hermite, bezier, nurb) as a control path for an object, add quaternion rotation and you
have a smooth control system for almost anything (my main goal being for camera's).

The main point is that you can then setup a nice flyby curve and animate the camera along that curve, slerping the angles to give
a smooth rotation and generally doing what almost all other games do :))

Sides.. I like it.

Phil.

#6 Oh and brendan, yes, curve surface support would be nice. But its not strictly necassary to complete a game with. Unless
there was a compelling reason to write the code, then I'm not sure its required. If someone who likes doing tech for
the sake of it wants to write that code, then fine.

Its not actually that hard either, you could add npatch support relatively painlessly, and Ive a feeling that npatch's are going
to be hardware accelerated sometime soon.

Quake uses patches(not npatches) for curves, it would be quite a simple thing to add quake curve surpport, but if we cant
use Q3Radiant to create content, its not a whole lot of use to us.

Phil.

#7 It may have support, depends upon the path-finding. If it uses a smoothed A* algorithm you may just be able to extrapolate that into a camera control system...

Owen

#8 Dont follow you there Owen.. whats A* got to do with camera's?

#9 I haven't looked at the code but I would assume the AI bots have a node based method traversing a map, you build the camera into the AI pathfinding system, if it uses path rounding to prevent jagged movement by the bots in theory couldn't it make your camera move smoothly as well along a special camera set of nodes placed on the map during building? This is of course assuming your camera panning are scripted events...

Owen

#10 Any progress Phil? I am interested in this sorta also. Need any help?

#11 Weird thing, I tried putting in spline path support to gamebase based on a graphics gem. But when I ported the quaternion code, the compiler went nuts and simply WOULDNT run torque.

So I had to roll back and give it up at the time.

Its still on my list though.

Ideally I want to write a class that supports all the parameters that can come out of 3dsmax camera's (so that I can write a 3dsmax compliant camera path exporter).

Phil.

#12 Do not know if it may be interested for you but I have added path movement support for shapebase derived object. I use it for example to have a train moving in our map : it follows a path defined in the mission editor by our mapper.