I was wondering if there is a tool that will allow me to construct/trace a closed bezier curve based on a background image?
Basically I have a background image that represents some 2d curve which could be of some weird shape like a race track and I want to place some items along this path.
I figured that if I can derive a quadratic bezier curve that will overlap the image I would be able to use the mathematical equations for this curve to compute individual points along its path..
Does anyone know if such tool exists? Is my approach reasonable or totally off and there is a much simpler solution?
Thank you in advance.
I suggest building it yourself. It shouldn't be too difficult to build a level creator where you add your own background image, place your bezier key points along where they need to be and export the points into a plist. It'll even give you room for extending it and customizing it for your game.
Also, if you're planning on tracing a path along a road for a racing game, consider constructing the background from smaller road/tree/grass sprites. This way you can give them specific properties (such as canDriveOn, canHit and so on) and based on customized behaviour defined for each one of them, your 'driveable' path would be derived implicitly.
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I have two STL models of a scanned skull that are similar but not the same. When they are rendered side by side as actors in a vtkRenderer, they are facing different directions and one has been rotated 180 degrees.
Normally, I would just hard-code in the transformation so that they are both oriented facing the screen, but in this case, there will be lots of similar but different skulls uploaded, all of which might face different directions.
So, can anyone suggest a VTK specific way to programmatically orient the skulls so they both face they same direction? If not in a VTK specific way, does there exist a generally accepted method to do this else where in computer visualization software?
In case you know rotation angles for each skull I would suggest to use that knowledge (eg.: prepare file with rotation angles for each model) and rotate them on load.
If not, then you have a real problem. If assumed that these skulls are pretty similar then I could suggest to try to align these skulls to each other, so in result they will be facing same direction.
You can achieve that through dedicated software like Geomagic, CloudCompare, or MeshLab , you can also write your own algorithm (Eg.: Least Squares Matching). You can also try to use library with already implemented alignment algorithms like PCL
Manual approach: You can use 3 points alignment method to achieve that. It will be way faster than trying doing that through rotations and translations. (How it works)
I am currently working on a soft body system using numeric spring physics and I have finally got that working. My issue is that everything is currently in straight lines.
I am aiming to replicate something similar to the game "The floor is Jelly" and everything work except the smooth corners and deformation which currently are straight and angular.
I have tried using Cubic Bezier equations but that just means every 3 nodes I have a new curve. Is there an equation for Bezier splines that take in n number of control points that will work with loop of vec2's (so node[0] is the first and last control point).
Sorry I don't any code to show for this but i'm completely stumped and googling is bringing up nothing.
Simply google "B-spline library" will give you many references. Having said this, B-spline is not your only choice. You can use cubic Hermite spline (which is defined by a series of points and derivatives) (see link for details) as well.
On the other hand, you can also continue using straight lines in your system and create a curve interpolating the straight line vertices just for display purpose. To create an interpolating curve thru a series of data points, Catmull-Rom spline is a good choice for easy implementation. This approach is likely to have a better performance than really using a B-spline curve in your system.
I would use B-splines for this problem since they can represent smooth curves with minimal number of control points. In addition finding the approximate smooth surface for a given data set is a simple linear algebra problem.
I have written a simple B-spline C++ library (includes Bezier curves as well) that I am using for scientific computations, here:
https://github.com/feevos/bsplines
it can accept arbitrary number of control points / multiplicities and give you back a basis. However, creating the B-spline curve that fits your data is something you have to do.
A great implementation of B-splines (but no Bezier curves) exists also in GNU GSL (
https://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/manual/html_node/Basis-Splines.html). Again here you have to implement the control points to be 2/3D for the given basis, and fix the boundary conditions to fit your data.
More information on open/closed curves and B-splines here:
https://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/COURSES/cs3621/NOTES/index.html
I'm new to using Box2d and really can't find a consistent answer to my question so please excuse me.
I'm writing a game for the iPhone -- who isn't these days -- and I'm using Cocos2d and Box2D. I have objects that move around in the game and I would like to give them a more of a curved path. From my studies I know that I should use body of type b2_kinematicBody which allows me to change the linear velocity every tick and keeps them from colliding with my other flying bodies. I do understand that if I know my current position (x,y) and my next position in the step (x1,y1) I would be able to compute the vector for velocity. Does anybody have a good way to give an object a defined curved path? I'm thinking it has to be some kind of parametric equation.
Take a look at bezier curves. After curve defenition you can compute the derivative (it's easy for bezier) and use it as a velocity for your body
OH whats the game called? sounds like a good one. have you looked into maybe just doing that in version 2.0
I want to create a 2D game with monsters build as a custom vertex mesh and a texture map. I want to use this mesh to provide smooth vector animations. I'm using opengl es 2.0.
For now the best idea i have is to write a simple editor, where i can create a mesh and make key-frame based animation by changing position of each vertex and specifying the key-frames interpolation technics ( linear, quadric and so on).
I also have some understanding of bone animation (and skin based on bones), but i'm not sure i will be able to provide a good skeletons for my monsters.
I'm not sure it is a good way to go. Can you suggest some better ideas and / or editors, libraries for such mesh animations ?
PS: i'm using C++ now and so c++ libraries are the most welcome
You said this is a 2D game, so I'm going to assume your characters are flat polygons on to which you apply a texture map. Please add more detail to your question if this is not the case.
As far as the C++ part I think the same principles used for 3D blend shape animation can be applied to this case. For each character you will have a list of possible 'morph targets' or poses, each being a different polygon shape with same number of vertices. The character's AI will determine when to change from one to another, and how long a transition takes. So at any given point time your character can be either at a fixed state, matching one of your morph targets, or it can be in a transition state between two poses. The first has no trouble, the second case is handled by interpolating the vertices of the two polygons one by one to arrive to a morphed polygon. You can start with linear interpolation and see if that is sufficient, I suspect you may want to at least apply an easing function to the start and end of the transitions, maybe the smoothstep function.
As far as authoring these characters, have you considered using Blender? You can design and test your characters entirely within this package, then export the meshes as .obj files that you can easily import into your game.
I want to make a 2D game in C++ using the Irrlicht engine. In this game, you will control a tiny ship in a cave of some sort. This cave will be created automatically (the game will have random levels) and will look like this:
Suppose I already have the the points of the polygon of the inside of the cave (the white part). How should I render this shape on the screen and use it for collision detection? From what I've read around different sites, I should use a triangulation algorithm to make meshes of the walls of the cave (the black part) using the polygon of the inside of the cave (the white part). Then, I can also use these meshes for collision detection. Is this really the best way to do it? Do you know if Irrlicht has some built-in functions that can help me achieve this?
Any advice will be apreciated.
Describing how to get an arbitrary polygonal shape to render using a given 3D engine is quite a lengthy process. Suffice to say that pretty much all 3D rendering is done in terms of triangles, and if you didn't use a tool to generate a model that is already composed of triangles, you'll need to generate triangles from whatever data you have there. Triangulating either the black space or the white space is probably the best way to do it, yes. Then you can build up a mesh or vertex list from that, and render those triangles that way. The triangles in the list then also double up for collision detection purposes.
I doubt Irrlicht has anything for triangulation as it's quite specific to your game design and not a general approach most people would take. (Typically they would have a tool which permits generation of the game geometry and the navigation geometry side by side.) It looks like it might be quite tricky given the shapes you have there.
One option is to use the map (image mask) directly to test for collision.
For example,
if map_points[sprite.x sprite.y] is black then
collision detected
assuming that your objects are images and they aren't real polygons.
In case you use real polygons you can have a "points sample" for every object shape,
and check the sample for collisions.
To check whether a point is inside or outside your polygon, you can simply count crossings. You know (0,0) is outside your polygon. Now draw a line from there to your test point (X,Y). If this line crosses an odd number of polygon edges (e.g. 1), it's inside the polygon . If the line crosses an even number of edges (e.g. 0 or 2), the point (X,Y) is outside the polygon. It's useful to run this algorithm on paper once to convince yourself.