A Smart Deformer which connects Spline Segments.
- Introduced in DEM Earth R6.127
This Deformer is Ideal if you have segments typically from GIS data providers which are composed of a multitude of sections which have been composed in a seemingly random order. There may be gaps and segments can be in the wrong order and go the wrong way.
This magical little gem will sort that messy track out for you.
how to use it?
Drop it under your spline, set the tolerance. Your done.
The poly object, can import poly, kml or gpx. More often than not, whoever (or whatever) put these tracks together for you had no consideration for someone who might want to animate this track. grow it, or generally do anything with it, beyond simply observing it. If you want to connect and animate such an ad-hock track, you will need to connected, sort, merge it, which is easier said than done. This new Spline connect deformer, takes care of that clean up task for you, performing wonders on your crazy tracks.
i.e.
This example track is made of a multitude of sperate, individual tracks with no regard for sequence or order. All put together somewhere, and exported as is, as a kml or gpx.
The Spline connect - Deformer, sorts, connects, reorders, and merges everything into one continuous spline.
That is not as easy as it sounds when you consider that many segments can not spatially connect at all, and may have a multitude of problems which make it near impossible to connect everything cleanly, without manually going in there and fixing things yourself. You do not want manual, you want procedural. This deformer is that solution.
You can use this any way you see fit, but the idea is to use it with the DEM Earth poly object, to fix bad tracks.
You can use it with smart OSM in the same way.
You can also make great use of the DEM Earth Smart Trim deformer, to animate the length of your spline.