[RELEASED] Curvy 2 - the ultimate spline solution

Thank you very Much

 

but how if I use 4 wheel for front Axis and back axis? not 4 wheel combine to 1
I use another train

 

that asset can use other track?
I use track from realistic railroad and draw the spline at the track..but the wheel of train just follow the spline,not follow the track, need to use generator to link between spline ,track & train?

 

In the said example, there is a controller for each pair of wheels. This can work with whatever number and position for your wheels. Take a look at TrainCarManager.cs to see how it was done for the example scene I referenced in my earlier post.

The best setup is to have indeed the same spline used both for generating the path and for the controller. You can draw the spline at the track like you did, but doing so will inevitably lead to your wheels being close to the track but not exactly on it. This might be ok if your game doesn't allow the camera to be too close to the track, this way those imprecisions will not be noticed.

 

Some questions about spline connections and controllers, sorry for being too lazy to test for myself.
If I connect some splines together using connections do they:

1)Still act as separate splines with regard to TF and distance to end, or do those values refer to the sequence of connected splines?
2)Does a spline controller's OnEndReached() event get called when the controller gets to the end of a spline that is connected to another spline or only when it gets to the end of all the connected splines.
3) Does the spline controller's Position refer to the current spline or all the connected splines it will travel across? (related to Q1)
4) If using the Offset Angle,Radius and Compensate Offset in a spline controller and moving the controller using the Advance function (or any function that involves speed), does the compensate offset mean the object will move at a different rate than specified? Will the object move at the requested speed/time/distance and the controller move less/more along it's spline based on compensate offset value or will the controller move at the requested speed/time/distance along the spline and the object move at less/more speed based on the compensate offset value?
5) if using the spline controllers' SwitchTo function, can this switch to any spline at anytime or only connected splines at a connection point?

Thanks again in advance and sorry for the confusing way I asked Q4.

 

Hi,
Answering off the top of my head:
1) They act as separate
2) It does
3) Current spline
4) This one "Will the object move at the requested speed/time/distance and the controller move less/more along it's spline based on compensate offset value"
Another formulation of its usage is in the documentation: https://curvyeditor.com/documentation/controllers#compensate_offset
5) Any spline

 

Hi Me again, still struggling with connections.
I have two splines A (a straight line linear/open) and B (closed oval). Ive created a connection between the last control point of spline A and a control point part way around Spline B (CP40). I have a controller that starts on Spline A.
Regardless of the options I set on the controller, splines or connections, I can not get the controller to continue on Spline B @CP40 when it gets to the end of SplineA. It either stops; teleports back to the beginning of spline A and continues along SplineA (loop); or turns round and travels back along SplineA to its start (ping pong).
In addition although I set the Head To in the connection object to be SplineB.CP40 when I look at the connection after clicking Play then stop (or just wait a while without doing anything), it's been reset back to blank.
Unity 217.4.11f1
Curvy 4.01

Solved but I don't understand why. I had the controller set to 'Follow up Spline'. Changing this to 'Follow up or Random' then ticking the option to reject the current spline solved the problem.

 

Hi,
I tried to reproduce you issue but couldn't. Can you please send me a scene where I can see the bug?

 

At the moment I have to get a preview out of what Im working on, will create a demo scene using the same splines and controller settings I have a problem with right after that. I can live with the work around at the moment, using follow up otherwise random with allow direction change and restrict divergent splines, allowed divergence angle 75.

 

I watched the 3 tutorial videos but connections are completely ignored. Can someone share a workflow or quick video on the following:

• Creating a new branch from a connection point
• Snapping 1 connection point to another to form a connection
  • From same spline (forming a short loop) and from a separate spline
• Breaking a connection so that the two connection points are then separated
• Generating a tubular mesh around a spline that branches (has at least 3 end points)
  • Inside of tube should be a clean tunnel with proper split at the connection
  • applying a texture to the inside of the mesh without distortion
  • adjusting diameter of mesh at individual control points

I tried to Google "Unity Curvy Connections"...you can probably imagine the dating sites that came up.

 

Hello

• Creating a new branch from a connection point
  The easiest way is to create a spline which would be your trunk, and for each branch select the control point from which the branch will start, and use the Draw Splines tool by right clicking where the first control point of the branch should be. Then you continue editing the branch as usual
• Snapping 1 connection point to another to form a connection
  Select both control points to be connected, and click on the Connect tool
  
• Breaking a connection so that the two connection points are then separated
  Select one of the connected control points, and click on "Delete connection" in the inspector
  
• Generating a tubular mesh around a spline that branches (has at least 3 end points)
  Mesh generating code sees branches as just multiple splines, and will generate a mesh for each spline, without "cutting" the excess mesh at the branches intersection
• Adjusting diameter of mesh at individual control points
  Variable mesh scaling is possible through the Scale tab of the Shape Extrusion module. It is not parametrable relatively to individual control points, but relatively to the position along the spline. More information here

More about connections here.
Also, some of the example scenes do use connections, like scene 03_Connections and 12_Train

About googling Curvy, yeah, the choice of the asset's name was not the smartest for that, but changing it at this point will probably yield more damage than benefits, so we are kinda stuck with it.

 

I don't own the product yet so I can't look at example scenes. I can only go by what you've published in screenshots and videos. I'm asking questions as part of a buying decision.

• Would it be a coming feature to clean up intersections when generating the surrounding mesh?
• I was hoping at best to be able to introduce a "noise" variance in the mesh generation, but at least be able to hand-select points along a spline and scale the volume. I see from your link that perhaps curves could be used over the length, which might be nice for a short spline, but probably not workable for a spline that has hundreds of points along its length.
• You didn't address my question about applying texture without distortion to the inside of the mesh.
  • For this I would envision using a texture with a long linear repeat and a specific vertical pattern that would scale to the diameter so the inside of the top, sides, and bottom would be predictable in appearance, having a "worn path" strip through the middle that would appear along the bottom surface for example.
  • I would also envision spawning random prefabs along the length that would penetrate the volume mesh to add variation (sparingly, so 4-6 per 10 meters or so).

Thanks!

 

FYI, there is also a WebGL demo on Curvy's website. Here is it's link: https://curvyeditor.com/demo

Since you don't own Curvy yet, here is a more detailed explanation about that point, followed by a solution suggestion.
In this screenshot, you can see that from a straight spline, I generated a mesh with varying radius

This is done through that animation curve, which inputs are from 0 (the spline's start) to 1 (the spline's end). This curve is available through both the inspector and the API, so you can easily add a script to fill that curve according to your own needs, whether it is based on some noise function, or based on the scale of the control points. Such scripts would be easy to make, I can even code it for you if needed.

This is not planned for the near future. It is definitely something that I would like to add to Curvy at some point, but it is not in the top priority for now.

Sorry, I thought you were speaking about the texture not having seams in the generated branched mesh.

If I understand you correctly, yes you can do that through this

PS: the image shows the outside of the tube, but it's the same inside

Yes you can do that. More information here. It is shown in the webGL demo, the scene called "Advanced: Clone objects along a spline"

 

Yes, I'd appreciate help with that script. I saw in the demo where custom data can be added to control points...couldn't that mechanism be extended to drive the mesh radius offset for the segment that extends from that control point?

How many different prefabs can I load into that process? The demo only shows 1...I'd need at least a dozen.

That's unfortunate. There is really no comprehensive spline tunnel system on the asset store. This feature makes that a reality. Being able to enlarge parts of the tunnel to make caverns, along with connecting spline ends to dungeon rooms, spawning a dozen or so random prefabs around the mesh, and adding custom data to control points, specifically a field for a prefab that would spawn cavern contents in the segment that extends from that control point gets us 95% there, but that last bit of cleaning out the mesh verts / faces where one spline connects to another is the final hurdle.

If anyone has ideas on how I could clean up the junctions with another tool after the mesh is generated, I'd love to hear about them!

 

This can be done.

There were two in the demo, ships and gates. There is no virtual limit on the number of objects you can load.

I have no ready solution for you, but here are some useful leads:

• The technical word for what you are looking for is a "Mesh boolean union"
  
• I am not aware of any existing Unity Asset that does it. The closest I found is a shader based boolean difference, which does not modify the mesh but the outputted picture
• Here are some .Net libraries that should make it easier to code a script that would generate the union of all the tunnels meshes.

 

I bought the asset today. While a proper solution is needed, I have an ugly workaround for now using prefab connectors on the ends of the splines.

 

Aka_ToolBuddy could you help me out with a couple of issues I have?

I am getting a really weird aberration in the shape extruder when I use it at runtime

Here is a quick gif showing how the issue occurs only during certain frames:
https://gph.is/2Bp6rFw

Here is a better quality image of the aberration. Instead of continuing the taper to 0 it continues to 1, or something close to it:


An image of the scale curve I was using (this is an arbitrary test curve, but they all go from 1 to 0):


Any idea what I am doing wrong, or what is going wrong?

Also, could you shed any light on this build error I am getting in 2018.3 with curvy, and whether it is fixable?

Cannot set the parent of the GameObject 'Input Spline Shape_1_Shape' while its new parent 'Input Spline Shape' is being destroyed
UnityEditor.UndoestroyObjectImmediate(Object)
FluffyUnderware.Curvy.Generator.CGShapeResourceLoaderestroy(CGModule, Component, String, Boolean) (at Assets/Plugins/Curvy/Base/CG/CGResource.cs:150)
FluffyUnderware.Curvy.Generator.CGResourceHandlerestroyResource(CGModule, String, Component, String, Boolean) (at Assets/Plugins/Curvy/Base/CG/CGResource.cs:66)
FluffyUnderware.Curvy.Generator.CGModuleeleteManagedResource(String, Component, String, Boolean) (at Assets/Plugins/Curvy/Base/CG/CGModule.cs:595)
FluffyUnderware.Curvy.Generator.CGModule:OnDestroy() (at Assets/Plugins/Curvy/Base/CG/CGModule.cs:323)
UnityEditor.BuildPlayerWindow:BuildPlayerAndRun()​

 

Hi,

About the first issue: I managed to reproduce the issue. I will work on fixing it today. For now, it seems that the issue doesn't happen if you untick the "Optimize" option in the "Path" tab.

About the second issue: this is an issue that appeared with Unity 2018.3. You can ignore it for now, it doesn't (as far as I know) affect the behaviour of Curvy. Its fix will be included in the next Curvy update, which is expected for later this week. If this issue does bother you, please write me again and I will send you some modified code to include in your Curvy's code

 

Thanks, outstanding support. If the build fix is due this this week then I am happy to wait for it.

 

Hi everyone,
Curvy 5.0.0 is live. Release notes available here https://curvyeditor.com/releasenotes.
Have a nice day

 

Hi everyone,
Curvy 5.1.0 is live. Release notes available here https://curvyeditor.com/releasenotes.
Have a nice day

 

Hi, I'm looking for a spline tool that can support GPU instancing.
When you have many repeatable objects such as railroad tracks, GPU instancing can help both reduce memory and increase rendering performance at the same time tremendously.
If it doesn't support instancing already, do you think you can add the support in the near future?
I believe you take optimizing performance seriously and I thought I had to ask.

Thank you very much.

 

Maybe I am not informed good enough, but isn't GPU instancing something that is set at the shader/material level? I am referring to this https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/GPUInstancing.html

 

Yes, that's right. It let you render the same geometry in massive amount.
Please take a look at this asset for reference. https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/?stay#!/content/117566

When rendering instances, you provide a single geometry and some parameters for each instances. Using these parameters, you can render them in a different location, with different material parameters and render them as many as you want without slowing down much. And you can also deform the geometry within the shader.

The simplest you can do is to just render the same mesh in a different location. For example, you have 1000s of the exactly the same railroad sleepers. You can render them in one draw call.

And you can also implement spline shader that let you deform the geometry within the shader. For example, railroad tracks are deformed along the spline. You can use the shader to deform it and you can render as many as deformed(different deformation for each instance) in one draw call.

I hope it makes sense and I really hope you support it in the near future.
I'm sure GPU instancing will be a huge win.

Thanks.

 

I took a look at GPU Instancer, and read parts of its wiki to understand more what we are talking about here.
After doing that, and sorry to disappoint you, but adding a custom GPU instancing solution is not something I am planning to do, at least not in the near future, for the following reasons:

1. The benefit is not big enough: I understand that it can save a lot of CPU and memory, but compared to existing solutions (Unity's GPU instancing at the material level, static baching, ...), the benefits starts showing at a very high number of instances, and from what I learned interacting with my customers, this is not the typical use case for Curvy users.
2. Its usage is not seamless: GPU Instancer, to be able to reach the performance gains, needed to do some compromises. For example, it disables Mesh Renderer, which means that some of it functionalities, like IsVisible, is not available anymore. This is a compromise that would be acceptable for someone who actively seeks to increase the FPS at any cost, but for the average Curvy user, such compromises will only make the asset more complicated to use and understand.
   
3. The implementation effort is too big for the benefit: that custom GPU instancing solution needs really a lot of work to achieve. I bet GPU Instancer took thousands of hours of work. Such time can be spend more efficiently in making features or optimizations that would benefit a wider range of Curvy users.
   
4. Curvy is compatible with existing optimization solutions: for users that will need to instantiate a huge number of objects, Curvy is compatible with Unity's optimizations and, as far as I understand it, with GPU Instancer too.

I will PM you to ask about your project's specifics, Curvy might be sufficient already in its current state.

 

Hi, my first usage is for the train. And here are my answers.

1. It depends on what you will use Curvy for. For Train type of example where you have thousands of sleeper GameObjects, it is unusable for the game because the drawcall overhead is way too much. With GPU instancing, you just need a single GameObject and draw them as many as you want.

2. You can still bend and deform in the shader making it seamless. Try to search under "GPU spline" and you will see some references how splines can be implemented in the shader. I'm sure someone already have made a solution.

3. Yeah, it won't be easy but getting the simple instancing will be pretty easy and you can start with simple instancing support and gradually increase the functionality.

4. Sure, for simple instancing, it may work with GPU Instancer, but spline deformation won't work with GPU Instancer. If I were to ask for support the simple instancing, I probably didn't ask in the first place. ^^

Anyway, GPU Instancing is a huge win for both the memory and performance. It will be an interesting project if you planning on making Curvy the best Spline engine in the future. There are many spline solutions in Unity but none support GPU spline.

Thanks.

 

Hi,

When I said "The benefit is not big enough", I didn't mean that GPU instancing does not provide big benefits, like you I believe the opposite. What I meant is that within the user base of Curvy, those who will benefit from such optimizations are a minority. And since I prioritize for now working on features that will positively impact a bigger part of the users base, I will not work on custom GPU instancing in the near future.

Also, I did a test on my PC (which is 4 years old) with 2km of tracks, containing 3K sleeper gameobjects, and the performance are very good (220 FPS) only by using the solutions provided by Unity (static batching, ...). Sure things can be enhanced (CPU and memory wise), and numbers would be different on other platforms, but we are far from the unusable realm.

About GPU splines, that's an interesting subject, thanks for bringing it to my attention. Digging more into it might prove me wrong, but I think that GPU splines would not be able to do all what Curvy does with its splines (making objects follow the spline, extruding a mesh along the spline that handle physics, ...). I will take a deeper look at this once I have the occasion.

 

Yeah, I understand, not everyone will need GPU instancing but having it as an option would be really helpful.

Likewise, we don't need all of Curvy functionality reimplemented in GPU shader but having some simple GPU spline mesh where you need the absolutely the fastest performance, it can help tremendously.

For example, if you just support Bezier GPU spline, I'll create the railroad tracks, wires using the only Bezier and I'll work around with the limitation until there are more options.
Users need to know the limitation and I'm sure many will use GPU version if they want to create a high-performance game.

I don't expect it to happen soon but let me know if you are heading toward that direction. I'll do my best to support you.

Cheers!

 

Thanks a lot. I will definitely let you know if and when I will go through that road.

 

Hi everyone,
Curvy 5.2.0 is live. Release notes available here https://curvyeditor.com/releasenotes.
Have a nice day

 

Hi Aka can your tool warp meshes? I mean can I model a template mesh in Maya and use it instead of extrude a shape along a path?

 

Hi,
With Curvy you can place existing meshes along a spline, or extrude a shape along a spline, but you can't at the moment deform an existing mesh along a spline. This is an interesting feature, I added it to my TODO list.

 

Can you add this for tomorrow???

 

I sometimes add features on request within a short time, but it is usually for small features which implementation is straight forward. The feature you explained will need me more time to be done. So, sorry to disappoint you, but don't expect this feature in the near future.

 

Yes I know thank you for your answer. I was just kidding.
I am aware of the work necessary to implement this functionality but I hope you can insert it as soon as possible. We are using your tool in our production and we would like to use it as the only tool as we have found ourselves extremely well over time. We have created a conversion tool for curves to make them compatible with megamesh and vice versa in this way we can use your excellent tool for everything except for the deformed / warp feature.
If you want to look at the game : http://www.gralgame.com

Thank you
Andrea

 

Hello, I just got a hold of the basics and I don't know how everything works yet but I already see something that might be a bug: I made a simple closed racetrack using the shape extrusion template. following the tutorials I made it look just like I wanted. But when I saved the project and reopened it the next day the material tags assigned to control ponts were different and the hard edge toggle in the shape extrusion module didn't work anymore. Unity version is 2018.3.7

 

also, curvy spline object somehow prevents me from being able to rename objects in the hierarchy window. I can rename them using the inspector but it's still a curious little thing.

 

Can you send me that scene please so I can debug it? Also, I would like you to give me more details about the intended tag an hard edge values, vs the actual ones

 

Can you give more details please? The control points of a Spline are automatically renamed to CPXXXX depending on there position in the spline. Other than that, I am not aware of objects being renamed automatically.

 

It somehow got fixed after I worked on the scene for a while but now I pened the scene again today and almost the same thing happened: the generated mesh has now only one material - "tex_road_2". it even lists only this material in the inspector. the material "tex_dirt_2" is missing. altough they are still present in the generator module as material 0 and 1. the control points of the spline shape for the road also have these materials assigned correctly.

screenshot shows the generated mesh covered with the road texture, while it's only assigned to control point 2. rest of them should be dirt texture.
hard edges work correctly this time.

 

As for the renaming issue - what exactly happens is in the hierarchy window when you select any game object and press F2 or click "rename" from context menu - it won't work. And it only happens when the game object "curvy spline" is active. when I disable it I renaming works again.

 

Hi,
Thanks for the scene. I haven't yet taken a deep look at it, but I see that Control Points have multiple instances of "Meta CG Options" scripts assigned to them. There should be only one of them for each Control Point. This might be the source of your issue.

 

hey you're right. I didn't add them though. And I cannot remove them. the components just spawn right in when I switch to the next control point

 

you are right, they seem to be added automatically when there are 0 instance of them in a CP, but they are not be added if there is already an instance. Do you confirm what I said?

 

at first it was adding the components even if there was already one there but after I closed and reopened the scene it behaved like you described. after I removed all the duplicated instances the materials display correctly again.

 

good news then. I will add some safeguard in future versions to avoid having multiple components on the same CP

 

cool. One major issue I have so far is that the editor stutters heavily when generator window is open. It's so bad that I get the modules disconnected accidentally all the time (mostly when I try to move the module - I click on it and it grabs the link instead of the window) and once it happens I can't undo it and I have to search for the nodes that were disconnected and fix them - the undo hotkey doesn't work for module links. It gets pretty tedious when there are many modules, which brings me to the next issue: generator window navigation. Is there a way to easily connect modules that are very far away frm each other?

 

I tried connecting modules via the inspector slots component but it doesn't seem to work.

 

I have some troubles with creating very short volumes in very speciffic parts of the patth. Mainly because of this parameter:
Range
Defines the portion of the Path to extrude. For closed paths From will repeat endless, while it's clamped for open paths.

Is there a benefit for it to work this way? It makes finding the right spot tedious and frustrating, as the generated mesh jumps around the whole track back and forth anytime I change the parameter trying to pin point the correct number.