Splines

Create and shape splines, and scatter meshes along them.

What it’s for

Ask your assistant to work with splines in the open level: the curves, their control points, and the meshes laid out along them. It can create a spline, add or remove points, move, rotate and scale each point, adjust tangents, and switch a point or a whole spline between curved, linear and constant.

Use it for anything that follows a curve: a road or path, a fence line, a cable, a pipe, or a row of repeated meshes. It also handles the meshes on the spline. Your assistant can create spline mesh actors, set their mesh and material, choose the forward axis, and scatter static meshes along a spline at the spacing and alignment you want.

Once a shape is generated and you want to edit the mesh itself, use Mesh modeling.

Things you can ask

Lay down a curved path

You get a new spline with its points already in place.

You: Create a spline called PathA that curves through three points near the origin.

Created PathA, a curved spline through 3 points.

Extend an existing spline

A new control point is added to the end of a spline already in the level.

You: Add a point to the end of PathA, out at x 1200.

Added a point at the end of PathA. It now has 4 points.

Scatter meshes along the curve

Meshes are placed down the spline at a fixed spacing and turned to follow it.

You: Line fence posts along PathA every 300 units, aligned to the curve.

Placed 14 SM_FencePost instances along PathA, 300 units apart and aligned to the curve.