Applications

Possible Applications Of The Algorithm

Cubic Hermite splines are widely used in computer graphics related softwares. If outlines of characters can be defined by cubic Hermite splines, accumulated power of resources from the well established TrueType font industry can be released to a much wider field of applications.

A number of features have been added to the editor during the time it was developed to demonstrate potential usage of the algorithm.

Generation of blueprint actor template

Algorithmically generated splines of a character of any TrueType font face can be used to programmatically create a blueprint actor template by the editor. Fig. 1 shows the UE blueprint editor with a created template opened. As can be seen in the image, the template is configured with 4 USplineComponent instances and each of them is initialized with control points generated by the algorithm. Every USplineComponent instance can be manually edited and serialized for later use.

Fig. 1 Programmatically Generated Blueprint Template (click to enlarge)

Spline Meshes

A powerful feature of Unreal Engine is to make static mesh follow splines by using the USplineMeshComponent component. If the splines are created from a TrueType font face, interesting 3D objects can be built within seconds. Fig. 2 shows an example of neon light objects built with font splines and USplineMeshComponent.

Fig. 2 Neon Lights Created from Splines, Static Meshes, and Emissive Materials (click to enlarge)

Visual Effects

Font splines can be used to define paths in 3D scenes. A typical usage of paths is to guide particle movement when constructing visual effects in a game. The following image shows fluid driven by particle animation flowing along spline paths in Unreal Engine.

Fig. 3 Fluid Flowing Along Paths (click to enlarge)

Procedural Content Generation

Cubic Hermite font splines can also be used as PCG guide lines to generate landscape or decorated areas illustrated below.

Fig. 4 PCG with TrueType Font Splines. (click to enlarge)