BezierGen 1.01 - makes bezier curves

I've made a new build tool called BezierGen that assembles box prims into Bezier curves. The user positions four control points to determine the shape of the curve. It operates very similarly to ShapeGen. In addition to the shape and dimensions of the curve, you can adjust the color, texture, texture scale and alpha of the the various sides of the building blocks. For now it only makes curves in the xy plane (imagine a wavy wall), although I suppose the resulting shape could be linked and rotated about. I'm not sure exactly how many uses people might find for it, but it is kind of fun. Below is a snapshot of something I threw together with the tool.

If you would like to give it a try, please IM me and I'll give you a copy. It's kind of in an informal beta stage, but if there are no problems I hope to make it available like my other free tools.

Cad, that's awesome! You never cease to impress me.

Oh my! That's certainly intriguing!

*Gets all sorts of ideas for irregularly shaped swimming pools and landscaping ponds!*

Yes, I would definitely like to play with that!

Question: Can you adjust the thickness of the walls that it produces? I'm thinking in terms of making an irregular wall for a pool, and then generating the same shape but with prims that are 'thicker' but 'shorter', so you can make a flagstone rim around the pool that matches the curve of the wall. Or maybe a curving patio around the pool?

Hey, thanks Chosen I'll drop a copy on you (to play with or not at your leisure).

Ceera - Yup, you can adjust the height and the width. One caveat is that unlike the rings and spheres made by ShapeGen, the curve can't be seamless where the edges of the blocks meet. The thicker the curve, the more obvious that will be. It might make a pretty cool swimming pool slide. I dropped a copy on you

Another great product Cadroe! But still waiting for you to throw together a 2V to 6V Fuller dome generator(hint, hint, hint). A lot of uses for such a creation with a lot less prim required as opposed to a ShapeGen sphere.

hmmm sounds interesting, i'll pick one up laters.

Really? I can't see why it shouldn't be possible to cannibalise bits from my Path Maker script to get the edges to match nicely. There used to be a pic of it in action linked from that page, but it seems to have gone now.

Oops, it looks like can't wasn't the right word. I didn't look at the problem too closely after recognizing that the angles between blocks wouldn't be the same on either side of a prim, and that the gaps would be oriented in opposite directions on the same side of an s-shaped curve. Perhaps your Path Maker script makes BezierGen unnecessary. I originally made this tool to generate splines to use with my ring making script as a lathe operator, so neat edges wasn't a concern.

No, the path maker script is pretty laborious, setting up each prim with the orientation and thickness you want, rather than doing a whole bunch of them at once in a calculated curve. I did a catenary generator for making bridges that does the necessary tapering, but that only needs tapering in one direction so it was easier.

Seifert - It does seem then like our tools are doing somewhat different things. If I can find the time I will look at your code to see if I can glean how to handle the edges.

Jesse - Maybe I should finally look at other kinds of spheres But it's all a historical accident you know. You can form spheres out of tilted rings, thus ShapeMaker was born of RingMaker...

I don't suppose you could whip up a "natural spline", a clamped cubic spline generator?

Back in the dim dark days of prehistory I digitized art on a digitizing tablet using DesignCad version 2 for DOS.

The "natural spline" is a good one for use in manual digitizing because the curve pass through all the control points, it is smooth and continuous. It would be good for building in SL too.


This isn't a real request, more of a fond memory of the insufficiently used natural spline.

Actually I think that's a good idea, Suezanne. I looked into natural splines and they seem pretty useful. If I can find a good explanation of how to solve the equations or some sample code, I might try to add them to the tool. Besides, then I'd change the name to CurveGen, which is a more natural fit with ShapeGen anyway

Where can I pickup the tool? I would love to play around with it.

Count me in too please, If you want to do some high stress tests IM me in world and Ill show u a 256m x 256 playground u can have private access too.

There's a slightly less ugly version of the code I did since we were able to taper either end of a prim, but it's not in the library, I'll send you a copy.

Hi Cadroe,

Oh oh, I'd LOVE to see this wonderful new toy of yours - may I have a copy, please?

Classy

Heya,

I would be interested in testing this tool out as well for you... let me know and look forward to it.

Cheers,

Wes

nice work cad, me and a freind where just talking of this idea the other day thinking how cool it would be for someone to make this.

awesome work

This is beyond awesome!

I'm constantly impressed with this stuff.

Now if I could only find time to make anything any more.... *cries*

:: drools :: can I get a copy please? Thanx for all your great work!

Hey folks, thanks for the kind words. I added the ability to make vertical or horizontal curves (you switch between them with "yaxis" and "zaxis". If you'd like a copy of BezierGen 1.1 and I haven't already sent you one, just let me know. Here's a pic of a "vertical" curve.

Sorry But I had missed this reply. No problem Cadroe. It is giving me something to aspire to someday. I feel I am about two months away from tackling it. Already have the formulas and of course I have one of each of your products. I'll always be able to look at yours to get clues. A tremendous amount of work you have given to the scripting community at large. It is much appreciated.

!

*Faints*

Cadroe - incredible! Could I have one, please?

OMG, Wonderful work, the imagination soars! Please add me to your list of subscribers, thx