Using meshes in splines
Hi there,
I'm very very new to using Blueprints but I want to use them in my current project to speed up my workflow when adding features to my levels. I've watched a few tutorials on Blueprints but I'm still very much finding my feet.
The first thing I need help with is this: I want to create a spline that I can draw out in my scene to create pipes BUT instead of the pipe mesh following the spline I want it to pull in different static meshes depending on the current angle of the spline. Here's an example of what I mean:
The reason I want to do this is because I have a lot of ground to cover in my project and I don't really want to spend time tweaking the spline angles as they go around corners. Instead I'd like to drag the spline out (not worrying about the exact spline points) knowing that the correct mesh will be automatically placed depending on the angle of the spline.
I've followed Dokipen's Spline tutorial https://bit.ly/2Y3e0vq and have had success in getting the spacing working correctly but working out the angle is proving difficult as my knowledge in Blueprints is quite weak at the moment.
Any help and/or direction would be much appreciated!
Replies
Mine allowed me to create a spline with few points very precisely (90degree corners like your example ) and not have stupid skewing.
iirc....
In the construction script you can create a new spline along the drawn one with points that are spaced correctly. This is where you put the spline meshes.
You can grab the tangent from the original spline at any point along it to give you the angles you need for the spline mesh.
It wasnt 100% straightforward - I got a bit confused with the spaces I was working in and I found it very helpful to create geometry gizmos for the generated spline points and tangent handles.
To do exactly what you want you need a bit of trig. The tangents at each point will form a triangle - you can work out the angle from that and pick the right mesh.