DeleD Community Edition

paul_nicholls · Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 5:40 am Post subject: path objects and curves

Hi all,
I was thinking of two enhancements that IMHO would be great to add into the DeleD editor.

Personally I would be happier to have enhancement 2 added first Smile

1. dedicated path objects - currently if you are creating a 'path' object for the Lathe command, or a special plugin which needs a path (or track), you usually use a poly line object.

I don't think this is as intuitive as a having a special path object that would just consist of vertices joined together - like a poly line but not closed. This path object could of course be manipulated in normal 3d space as usual, but it couldn't be triangluated, etc. as it is only a bunch of lines.

I envision that this could be used as the input to the lathe command (or other commands) and by plugins which of course would create the faces using that path.

2. Curve Objects (cubic bezier, cubic b-spline, catmull-rom, hermite) - see links below for curve examples

piece-wise cubic bezier interpolation

http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/geometry/bezier/cubicbezier.html

general splines

http://www.blackpawn.com/texts/splines/

interpolation using different curves

http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/miscellaneous/interpolation/

Perhaps you could even have a path object (1) that is also a curve of some kind so you could make nice smooth objects Smile

Feel free to disagree, nit-pick, and otherwise comment on my thoughts Smile

Just my humble 2c.

PS. Paul-Jan and crew, I already have some Delphi code that I created that has classes that can turn a list of 3d points into nice piece-wise curves using Bezier curves, etc. if that will help get stuff like this into DeleD...feel free to private message me Smile

cheers,
Paul

chronozphere · Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 11:15 am Post subject:

You could make a plugin out of that code, that creates a polygon out of a spline. The plugin allows you to create a spline which will be exported to DeleD (On the XZ plane for example). You could add a "detail" option that tells how many vertices should be used in the resulting polygon.

Just an idea. Cool

paul_nicholls · Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 12:17 pm Post subject:

Hi chronozphere,
BTW are you from Pascal Game Development by any chance? Smile

I had thought of the plugin idea, but also thought that having 'native' curves inside DeleD would be great too Smile

Perhaps I will make a plugin to do that sort of thing...I had already made one plugin to do extrusions along polyline paths (http://www.delgine.com/plugins/viewPlugin.php?catid=41&catdesc=Extensions&contentid=22).

cheers,
Paul

chronozphere · Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 5:32 pm Post subject:

Yeah.. I agree that native curves would be cooler. Smile

Jeroen · Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 8:11 pm Post subject:

I really like the idea of having some sort of path primitive within DeleD which could be used for lathe or extrusion along path tools etc. It seems like a logical thing to have within DeleD.

After 2.0 comes out, we will be making up a short list of things to concentrate on next. The list will include things like CSG improvement and, quite possibly, new stuff like your suggestion.
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paul_nicholls · Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 9:35 pm Post subject:

Jeroen · Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 9:47 pm Post subject:

paul_nicholls · Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 10:44 pm Post subject:

paul_nicholls · Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 6:15 am Post subject:

Hi guys,
I just thought of a new addition to paths, etc.

Allow to draw curves freehand, and then have the option of turning it into line segments no larger than some threshold size, or just turn it into x number of line segments Smile

This would be handy!

cheers,
Paul