Spline

A spline is a curve or collection of continuous curves that are defined by a set of (in this case) 3D points. Unlike point clouds, splines are an excellent type of geometry for drone formation definition because they can be split up infinitely to support any number of drones.

Spline Shapes

There are multiple spline-based shapes that can be generated/manipulated with simple parameters. Any of these shapes can be converted into an "Editable Spline" by selected the associated button in the spline edit toolbar.

These shapes include:

Color

Splines can be assigned solid colors, or gradients. If a gradient is assigned, then the gradient will be applied along the spline in order from the start to end.

Editing Splines

When selecting one or more splines, spline shapes, or compound splines, a toolbar will appear on the top of the scene view. This toolbar provides quick ways of manipulating splines, editing geometry, and managing groupings. Buttons become enabled/disabled based on the current selection and state of the splines.

The spline toolset panel

These buttons are responsible for changing a shape into another shape container. Some tools and options are not available unless a bezier shape is converted into an editable spline or the shape is a compound spline.

To Editable Spline

Convert a bezier shape into a form that can be manually editable. This will cause the shape to lose its unique parameters in favor of a generic spline

To Compound Spline

Convert a bezier spline or shape into a compound spline, supporting multiple splines in a single shape

Slotting Control

Pivot Weighting

The design studio leverages geometric information to make decisions around where to place slots. In the case of a spline, harsh angles or "corners" can be treated specially and the software well make sure that a drone is placed exactly on the corner. This will maximize detail and definition.

Pivot weighting on (Left) and off (right)

Use Pivot Weighting: Enable/Disable the use of pivot weighting in the slot solution

Pivot Angle Threshold: The angle (in degrees) that a corner must be below in order for it to be treated as a pivot point

Partial Spline

The slot solver can be set to use only a portion of a spline. This is particularly useful in combination with animating the slot offset field if you want to move a group of splines along a path.

Use Partial Spline: Enable/Disable the use of a partial spline

Start Percent (%): The location (in percent, where 0% is the start and 100% is the end) to start the spline

End Percent (%): The location (in percent, where 0% is the start and 100% is the end) to end the spline

Shifting end percent from 100% to 0%

Hull Slot Solver

Along with the standard linear solver, there is also a mode that allows a spline shape to be filled in.

Hull Projection Axis

  • Description: Specifies the axis along which the spline is projected to compute the 2D hull for slotting.

  • Options:

    • X, Y, Z: Choose the axis orthogonal to the hull's plane. Used to flatten 3D splines into a 2D working surface.

Slot Mode

  • Description: Determines the algorithm used to generate the filled surface inside the spline’s hull. This affects how vertices are distributed across the area enclosed by the projected hull.

  • Options:

    • Scaled Fit

      • Fills the convex or concave polygonal region and then stretch them so that points touch the boundary of the shape

      • Ideal for structured interpolation and clean, regular fills.

      • Can set the number of columns/rows directly or define a density for placement

    • Poisson Distribution

      • Inserts vertices using a Poisson disk sampling method.

      • Ensures randomly distributed points with a minimum distance between them, avoiding clumping while preserving uniformity.

      • Best suited for naturalistic or non-uniform point distributions (e.g., organic modeling, scattered elements).

      • Row and scanline settings are ignored in this mode.

      • Density controls how close/far points are distributed

      • Random seed can be tweaked to get slightly different distributions

    • Bounded Grid

      • Fills the hull area with a regular grid of points, clipped to the boundary of the projection.

      • Produces a structured mesh of evenly spaced rows and columns, spacing is identical vertically and horizontally.

      • Works well for mechanical or architectural shapes requiring evenly spaced subdivisions.

      • Density controls how close/far points are distributed

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