topic Re: What are splines used for? in Stingray Forum (Read Only)

What are splines used for?

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Mar 2016 15:36:22 GMT

Hi, I am relatively new to Stingray but am loving it so far. I am keen to know some ways that Spline objects can be used.

One idea I had was to dynamically draw objects like roads or pipes from splines. Another possibility would be to use the spline as a path constraint. Are there any example projects or tutorials out there that show this?

Re: What are splines used for?

dan.matlack — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 16:25:21 GMT

We do not currently have any specific spline-based tutorials but it is on our list to do! Your examples are good ideas of uses. You are only limited by your imagination and coding/flow abilities. 🙂

Re: What are splines used for?

Shanii2 — Tue, 15 Mar 2016 19:05:10 GMT

Can Splines be used , other than in use for navigation, like without setting up navigation system 🙂

Re: What are splines used for?

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 11:58:15 GMT

Thank you @dan.matlack, I'm looking forward to seeing some workflow tutorials when you can get to them!

@Shanii2, that is what I would like to use them for. Is it a matter of some Lua code saying "travel to each point along the vector between the two verticies"? Does that tie into the existing nav system or is it completely separate?

Hmmm, maybe both. Maybe I add a spline and then add nav markers at each point at run time...I will have to try this unless someone tells me that won't work.

Re: What are splines used for?

Shanii2 — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 15:49:00 GMT

Well, match of the path information is accesed by, nav bots, that are set by navigation system, so thats why im curious if can be used outside then that, like constraining paths of one or more units without setting navigation. For simpler stuff navigation system gets quite a load.

Re: What are splines used for?

dan.matlack — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 16:04:10 GMT

We currently don't have an out of the box solution for linking to splines or paths outside of Navigation, but this is of course all possible. You can set this up in lua or you could animated this in your DCC tool of choice and then import. It's fairly straight forward gameplay scripting. We will try to cover most of this when we get a tutorial together on splines in the future.

Re: What are splines used for?

Shanii2 — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 16:28:47 GMT

Ok thanks, Can you provide a simple mechanism to passively move the character, i only have one or two characters in scene, and needs to procedurally control them passively, well setting up a whole navigation system for just one or two characters, is quite troublesome, is there a way to get it work around so thats, the animation and other characters activity can be performed. Like is it possible story editor, or any simpler workflow, thanks 🙂

Re: What are splines used for?

dan.matlack — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 16:56:13 GMT

Currently we only handle this in the Navigation plug in that I can see. We will have to write something to expose this in lua for our example tutorial. You can always write your own script -- get the spline, calculate the vector and then move and update the character's position and vector every tick along the position of the spline.

Re: What are splines used for?

Shanii2 — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 17:00:47 GMT

HHmm, well sounds promising, :). Im not much fond in scripting, but i cant
wait to see some tutorials regarding splines and using custom nodes, Thanks
🙂

Re: What are splines used for?

RudyRG3D — Sat, 19 Mar 2016 16:36:54 GMT

A BIG +1 from me too on seeing tutorials for splines. I have been looking for that as well, and I'm sure a lot of us would like that too. 🙂

Re: What are splines used for?

Shanii2 — Sat, 19 Mar 2016 16:43:08 GMT

Yeah not much new tutorial around lately, but i also perfer, advance particle system, Human Ik implementation, tutorials, And added new features like morphs targets, vertex animations and so :). The v1.2 is amazing as i was looking for a way to dynamically control shading, now i can just triger the same using story animations. 🙂

Re: What are splines used for?

dan.matlack — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 15:33:31 GMT

We are working on more tutorials and revamping the help documents moving forward. Thanks for your patience!

Re: What are splines used for?

Shanii2 — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 17:28:16 GMT

Cool 🙂

Re: What are splines used for?

RudyRG3D — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 19:42:54 GMT

Hello. I just wanted to check-in to see if there has been any updates to these tutorials and especially a spline related tutorial? Thank You.

Re: What are splines used for?

paulkind — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 12:36:24 GMT

I recently did a nice tutorial on particles, but it does not include anything on splines. None the less, you are welcome to check it out and my youtube page for the time being.

Particles Tutorial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj1K4-tVEm8&list=PLDTSNodQJU6ZJ-LMP6pAOqMcZg9O6DjwX&index=31

Combined list of Tutorials relating to Stingray

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTSNodQJU6ZJ-LMP6pAOqMcZg9O6DjwX

Official Autodesk Tutorial Page

https://www.youtube.com/user/autodeskgameshowtos

We will do our best to keep you informed of developments as they arise.

Paul

Re: What are splines used for?

RudyRG3D — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 21:14:59 GMT

Hello Paul,

Thank you for the reply and the links - those are helpful. I think it would be great if Autodesk could have all the Stingray Tutorials listed as a sub-header/dropdown on the main www.stingrayengine.com website too. YouTube can sometimes be hard to find things easily. I have been looking for Splines (follow a spline interactively) for a while on Stingray, as that is not something supplied out-of-the-box. I really do not know Lua and I plan to learn that too, but I was hoping that maybe someday a spline tutorial might be in the works 🙂

Do you by chance know of a good place to learn Lua? The Lua.org site does not seems to be that great, and some links tend to be broken. I am thinking something in more of the style of Codecademy or Khan Academy.

Thank You and very nice Particle Tutorial too!