3d path creator

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Ian Lett

(Posted 2011) [#1]

I have been messing about with b3dsdk and blitzmax and found it to be a fair combination, however i want to have objects move along a pre detemind path so i looked at agore's birddemo and it looks simple,but i need a tool to draw/create the path files, so can ayone sugest a good(simple) one

thanks

Kryzon

(Posted 2011) [#2]

Do you use any modelling tool that supports paths and path animation-constraints? the ones that pop to mind are 3DS Max and Blender3D.
You could use the animation-constraint to position a series of cubes along the path's points, and then export all these cubes as a hierarchy in a 3DS file.

Read this file back in the SDK and consider each cube as a point in the path you made, storing their transformation data (i.e.: position and rotation). Make sure to free each cube after you capture their transformation, since all you need are the values and not the meshes.
Now you can code an algorithm to interpolate some object's transformation among this series of points.

Another way would be to code your own tool to create this path (with proper camera navigation, animation previewing etc.), that would export to some simple path definition file.
You just need the amount of points and each one's position and rotation data:

15  ;Amount of points.
X, Y, Z, P, Y, R  ;Point 1
X, Y, Z, P, Y, R  ;Point 2
X, Y, Z, P, Y, R  ;Point 3
[...]
X, Y, Z, P, Y, R  ;Point 15

Ian Lett

(Posted 2011) [#3]

Thanks Kryzon, i was hopeing for a instal readymade tool, but with what you hase given me i should be ok. as an aside does anyone know of a tutorial for pathing ?