MV Follow Me - Curve Tools  

MV Follow Me - Tools

The MV Follow Me - Curve Tools for Substance Designer is a collection of utilities, to place a pattern along shapes and paths.

It uses a robust thinning algorithm to find the center of a path or curve. It provides a large variety of parameters,  to refine the result to fit exactly your needs.

Some Highlights:

• Two Nodes, Follow Shape and Follow Path to create exactly what you need and keep the graph optimized
• Uses a robust and customizable path finding algorithm, with a lot of options to adjust and refine the result
• 3 different path-creation modes, Around a Shape, Along a two ended path and Along a closed loop
• Choose between Fixed Distance or Fixed Amount to place the pattern
• 4 different Quality Levels, to keep the processing power as optimized as you need
• Adjustable Tangent Angles, to get rid of small irregularities of the input Shape
• Input up to 6 different custom image inputs
• The Path inspector Output marks critical parts with a red dot, so it's quite easy to adjust   
• Full Documentation and Node-Reference (.pdf) or shared document

For questions, bugs or feature requests please let me know, leave a comment or contact me

What's new in 2.3

• New Features
  • All the nodes have now a Mirror Parameter, which mirrors the Pattern across the tangent, based on the displacement value. 
• Experimental Feature
  • The Input of Non Square Textures does work now quite well, there are still cases where the algorithm breaks, due to to big stretching in the texture. You achieve best results if you keep the Shape Image and the Node Ratio equal. Please report any problem with this new feature and describe you specific case or send me a .sbs, so I can investigate further.

What's new in 2.2

• New Features
  • All the nodes have now a Displacement Map Input and a Displacement Parameter, which replaces the Inset Parameter
    
• Major Bug-Fixes
  • When the Amount Paramter was set lower than the Calculated Amount, this Amount was shifted towards the center of the shape, due to a wrong Variable in the Follow Me - Splatter Node.  
• Knowns Issues
  • The Input of Non Square Textures, doesn't work correctly,the MV Follow Shape - Node can accept a Non-Square Input and also a Non-Square Output-Size, but this stillvery experimental and the Outputs are not very accurate.

What's new in 2.1

• Major Bug-Fixes
  • The Path Inspector of the MV Follow Path Node when set to lower quality, identifed two pixels at the end of a path as error, this is fixed now. Due to the way Substance Designer treats Output-Sizes driven by a value, this can still happen in very rare cases. (Please report any issues related to that, so I can work on the fix) 
  • The Thinning-Algorithm got redone completely, because I'm working on a way to support Non-Square Inputs (Requested by Pauline Boiteux, thank you for that, I'm working very hard on that feature)
  • Performance Optimization on the Follow Me - Splatter Node, it calculated both the grayscale and the color Output, but only one is needed.
  • Performance Optimization on the MV Follow Shape Node, if the Inset-Parameter is 0 it uses a simpler way to calculate the path.
  • Performance Optimization on the MV Follow Path Node, if the Path Inspector Output is not shown, it won't calculate all the issues, only if you set that parameter to true, for fixing the path, it requires a few heavy calculations and Flood Fill - Nodes.
• Minor Bug-Fixes
  • In some rare cases the Thinning-Algorithm used in the MV Follow Path - Node broke the continuity of the path, due to a small rounding error.
• Knowns Issues
  • The Input of Non Square Textures, doesn't work correctly,the MV Follow Shape - Node can accept a Non-Square Input and also a Non-Square Output-Size, but this stillvery experimental and the Outputs are not very accurate.

What's new in 2.0

• New Features
  • The new Follow Curve - Node (Requested by Daniel Thiger (https://www.artstation.com/dete), thank you for that ;-)): This Node lets you draw your own curve and places the pattern along that curve. For now it has up to 11 control points to draw quite complex shapes as B-Spline. This node will also be improved, based on your feedback.
  • The new Follow Me - Splatter Node: It takes the data of one of the other 3 nodes and can reuse the already created path as a base to place the pattern. This is very useful in terms of optimization, because the main calculation have to be made just once and then used multiple times. I hope this improves your workflow a lot.
  • All Nodes have now a Scale-Map and Rotation-Map Input, so you can drive the size and rotation by a gradient input.
  • All Nodes have now a Color-Mode Switch, so you can either use the grayscale or color version.
  • All Nodes have 3 Data-Outputs, which can then be used with the Follow Me - Splatter
  • All Nodes have now a Position-Random Parameter, to achieve a jitter-effect along the path
  • The Follow Path - Node has now a Threshold-Parameter for the Fit to Input Path Option. This sets the minimum value of the fitting path. This is very useful, if you have a blurred input and want the pattern to be limited to a specific value of the input path.
• Major Bug-Fixes
  • In some cases the input Path of the Follow Path Node couldn't be calculated due to an issue with the resolution, now the algorithm is a bit more stable and independent from the Input - Resolution of the shape.
  • The Additional Thinning Parameter was sometimes thinning to much, which could lead to gaps in the path.
• Minor Bug-Fixes
  • The Icons where missing on the Nodes
• Knowns Issues
  • The Path Inspector of the Follow Path Node when set to lower quality, does identify two pixels at the end of a path as error, this is not really an issue for the node, but for the Inspector Output. This is somehow related to the way Output Sizes are treated in an .sbsar, because the issue doesn't occur with the .sbs. I will fix that in the next patch.

Thank you all for your input and support. If you have any questions, requests or feedback just contact me. I'm happy to help.

Stay healthy and creative

All the best Marco