With Maya curve tool, we can create a 3D path and make our agents feel it and interactive with it, such as follow it. And our path supports indexing.
3D Path
The path system is very similar like "road" but we extended it into 3D space. For creating the path, we need to the 2 steps:
- Select a curve and make sure it frozen transformation (translate and rotate 0 and scale 1)
- Click Miarmy > Perception Knowledge > Create 3D Path
Then the selected curve will be marked path and there will be a path range been drawn out like the above picture shown, the blue range circles is the path range.
Also there are some path attributes in the channel box, but at this time, only "flow width" and the "road ID" is useful.
Path attributes in channel box
Please check out the follow picture, the orange dot line is the curve we used to create the path, and the cylinder is a range which distance from curve is "Range" which marked by the blue short line.
If we want our agent feel the path, the agents should be inside the road range, there are 2 agents in the below image, the inside one can feel the path and interactive with it, but the outside one cannot
The inside agent can feel the path whereas the outside one cannot, and the path range is R, short blue line
Sentences
(Path)
- I'm in path and it point to LEFT/RIGHT
- I'm in path and it point to UP/DOWN
- I'm in path[?] and it point to LEFT/RIGHT
- I'm in path[?]] and it point to UP/DOWN
Above sentences test path direction in horizontal and vertical.
The last 2 sentences test path with index
In the new version of Miarmy (3.5), we added the path edge range auto shrink tool.
Now we can define a edge range for any 3D Path like below picture shown:
Edge Range
Edge Range in Maya
Edge Range attribute
When agent in the edge range, it can automatically feel and detect they are in that area, and then they will try to fly inside to central path without fly out from path.
This can keep our agents always inside the path range and follow it.