Easy Curved Line Renderer [Free Utility]

Earlier today I discovered AnimationCurves and was experimenting with their usefulness when I discovered how to easily smooth out any set of positions, and so it is also very easy to create some simple Curved Line Renderers!

Included:

LineSmoother.cs

• main utility script for smoothing out positions
• static function so it can be accessed without being attached to a gameobject
• feed it an array of Vector3 and a segment size and you will get back a smoothed out array!
• segment size is world space and so the number of line segments in between points adjusts based on distance between points

CurvedLineRenderer.cs

• example use case for smoothed out positions
• add new points and it will automatically update to include the new position!
• example scene is provided with a regular curved line and a curved line with physics applied to each point

CurvedLinePoint.cs

• draws gizmo and sends back to CurvedLineRenderer to update line when the point is moved

And because I think this is useful, and because I always enjoy when others post free stuff, I am giving this away for free!

 

This is a really neat little utility!

I could see people coming back to this post for a while whenever they need something like this.

It seems one of those things a lot of people have thought "that would be nice to have", but never sat down and wrote.

 

Glad it is useful! Are there any other tools that you have thought "that would be nice to have"?

 

THANK YOU!

 

True, more than a year has passed and I already found it useful

If you have a visual editor to handle the points in real time it would be great, it's not that much user friendly when you have to do a precision curve, but it's just a "nice to have" thing really

 

Awesome !

 

Thanks man, this tool is awesome

 

Thanks a lot for this tool After struggling for some time to draw curves for objects to follow, you helped the noob i am so much !
I just changed this to make them grow :

Code (CSharp):

1. // 2 public variables instead of 1 for width
2.     //public float lineWidth = 0.1f;
3.     public float lineWidthStart = 0.1f;
4.     public float lineWidthEnd = 0.1f;
5.  
6. // then used in SetPointsToLine()
7.             //line.SetWidth( lineWidth, lineWidth );
8.             line.startWidth = lineWidthStart;
9.             line.endWidth = lineWidthEnd;

Which then allows me to use the Width curve in the editor to finetune the growth


Thanks again

 

this looks great, but what version of Unity is it for? It does not load with 2017.3

 

I successfully used this very useful package (thanks a lot @Haagndaaz !!!) with Unity 2017.1, 2017.2 and 2017.3.
I also made some changes to make curved lines look like their were solid (wires or pipes).

Here you can find a screen capture and a package made with Unity 2017.1.2f1 (also tested in Unity 2017.2 and 2017.3).

 

Whoa! Glad you liked it and great job in improving it @G_P_V

 

Wanted to say thanks too Found it very useful in my little Kinect game, generating an elastic line between a character and their thought bubble. Threw a thought bubble material on the line and voila!

 

Thank you for sharing this cool resource ! It's very useful for a project I'm working on. I wanted to know if it's possible to change the Line Width of a specific Line Point instead of the global Curved Line. I basically want it to get thiner at the end of it. Do you know how I could do that ?

 

Done!
I added a flag useCustomEndWidth (Use Custom End Width in Editor) to enable a different line ending (set to false by default to not affect the previous version), with an additional endWidth field to be set if the previous flag is set to true (Use Custom End Width checked). I also updated the example scene to demonstrate this feature.
Here you can find a screenshot of these changes and the updated package:

 

Perfect ! Thank you very much for this update ! Helps a lot

 

Should put this on the asset store for free, it's a very neat utility

 

thank you ，it's helpful！！！

 

Please can you provide me 5.4 version of it.

 

This is really aweseom and i am looking for. But i imported the package in unity 5.4 it is not working. the error i have remove but there is no object at all.

 

@MFKJ The version you are trying to use was specifically developed upon Unity 2017.1 and above, it does not work with previous versions because of the lack of line texturing feature. Anyway you can still use the original version by @Haagndaaz.

 

But the problem is that your wire is more realistic and i want that feature.

 

Sorry, no hope without Unity 2017.1 or above, you have not the "Generate Lighting Data" option in the Line Renderer component, needed to use a normal map. Please compare the documentation of 5.6 and 2017.1 versions of Unity:
https://docs.unity3d.com/560/Documentation/Manual/class-LineRenderer.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/2017.1/Documentation/Manual/class-LineRenderer.html
If you really want this feature you have no choice: install Unity 2017.1 (or above)...

 

Hi, sorry if I'm mistaken, can this interesting util be used as a rope that interacts with physics/FPS controller?

 

In the provided example scene you can find something similar in the "CurvedLine Physics (wire)" game object. It it modeled as a flexible cable, with Spring Joints between each pair of line control points ("LinePoint*" game objects in the example). I think you can use Unity joints to model a behavior of a rope. You should consider that rigid bodies are placed only at the control points, so if you need more accuracy you also need more control points.

 

Anyone know if this is still working in 2018.2.4 and beyond? I've changed the obsolete line:

//set line settings

            //lineRenderer.SetVertexCount( smoothedPoints.Length );

            lineRenderer.positionCount = smoothedPoints.Length;

but I can't seem to get the lines curving and the gizmos won't show.

 

@Romano Which version you downloaded? In the version attached to my previous post I can't find the line you commented.
I tested it with Unity 2018.2.5 and it works.

 

Ah! I have no idea which version I got it such a long time ago. Is post #14 the most recent?

Thanks for the reply!

 

@Romano Yes, as far as I know... I posted my changes only here until now.

@Haagndaaz Do you host this package somewhere else? If not, do you plan to publish it somehow (e.g. GitHub, Asset Store)?

 

Hey @G_P_V, I honestly didn't think about posting it anywhere else, just since I don't have time to maintain it at the moment.

 

@Haagndaaz I perfectly understand. Would you agree if I publish this package on my GitHub page (https://github.com/gpvigano) under MIT license (https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT), mentioning that you are the original author, with a link to this forum?
I think this could help to keep track of changes and to collect contributions. Anyway this is your creation, so I'll obey your decision...

 

I wouldn't mind at all! You can also email me at acryliccode@gmail.com if needed Have fun with this!

 

@Haagndaaz: thanks, I created a repository on GitHub for your Easy Curved Line Renderer, mentioning that you are the original author, with a link to this forum: https://github.com/gpvigano/EasyCurvedLine

Thanks also to every one in this forum who contributed with questions, solutions and suggestions.

 

Hey guys, thanks a lot for your work ! Really cool features, I used the script to easyly make electric wires, very nice and pretty "cheap" ingame.

 

Thank you!

 

Great resource - thank you!

 

Thank you @Haagndaaz and @G_P_V very much. This is fantastic

I love how the curve smoothly enters and exits each point. How would you go about connecting the last node to the first one? to create a loop, so that the spline is smooth the whole way around. I see that i can use the line renderer to create a loop but it adds a straight section between the last and first point.

 

That was something I never got around to, making some function to close the loop. If you want, you can go ahead and try to add that in and contribute

 

unfortunately my programming skills are still very rudimentary. I'm not liking my chances of solving this

In the CurvedLineRenderer.cs file I added a public UseLoop bool = false; variable.

Inside the GetPoints function i added this. It connects the end to complete the loop but i am unable to work out how to use your LineSmoother.cs to smooth out in and out of the start point.

if (UseLoop == true)
{
CurvedLinePoint childPoint = transform.GetChild(0).GetComponent<CurvedLinePoint>();
curvedLinePoints.Add(childPoint);
}

 

This is godsent

 

Hi guys. In Unity 2018.3.3f1. I found a lag in LineRenderer in Unity component and animation. While you use animation curve points is late.
The solution is rewrite script change from Update() to LateUpdate(). After it it is works perfect!
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ExecutionOrder.html (Animation goes affter Update and becouse this LineRenderer late for a frame)

P.S. : Thanks Haagndaaz & others for a beautiful plugin!

 

Thank you for the unitypackage.

 

How can I draw the line render in UI ,
the Screen space of canvas: Camera seems work..
But the Screen space of canvas: Overlay do not work !!
Can I draw the line render in Screen space of canvas: Overlay???

 

@Dr-Game: Maybe you can find useful information about this topic at this link: https://forum.unity.com/threads/ren...75.1611977325.1570103503-378627405.1569310196

 

Thanks for this package.

 

Thank you. It's very useful.

 

Thank you very much! Great code!

 

Thank you a lot!

 

Can I achieve SMOOTH line rendering based on the touch input with this?