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Release Notes

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A short note on each release: what's new, what's fixed, and what to watch for when upgrading. Newest release at the top.

7.0.0 — Unreal Engine 5.8

Plugin rename

  • The plugin was renamed from "SplineCraft PRO" to "SplineCraft".
  • Backward compatibility is preserved. Unchanged: the module name (SplineCraft), the API macro (SPLINECRAFT_API), the content mount point (/SplineCraft/...), the class paths (/Script/SplineCraft.*), and the layout of properties and structs (FSC*). Existing levels, Blueprint subclasses of ASplineCraftActor and asset references keep working as-is.
  • Only the plugin folder name (SplineCraftPRO → SplineCraft) and the FriendlyName changed.
  • The BP_SplineCraft_PRO asset was deliberately not renamed, so references in projects do not break.

Engine support

  • The plugin was updated for Unreal Engine 5.8.

New

  • Root Mobility. A new property on the actor, next to Mobility. It sets the mobility of the actor's own spline root, independently of the generated meshes. Default Static — older scenes are unchanged. Set it to Movable to attach a movement component (e.g. Rotating Movement) or to move / rotate the whole structure at runtime; set Mobility to Movable as well so the meshes follow (a generated mesh is now automatically bumped so it is never left more static than the root, which would abort the attach).

  • Build Scenario — building step by step. A new SplineCraft Build Scenario asset: an ordered list of steps, each step an existing preset + a delay + an offset + an appear mode (Instant / Rise From Below / Scale Up / Material Progress). An actor with a scenario assigned becomes a "director": on the Play Build Scenario button it spawns child SplineCraft actors one by one along its own spline, each with its own offset — so one preset raised on Z gives the floors of a building. Reverse is the same sequence taking it back down. In the editor there is a Preview Progress slider (0→1) with no timers. Fully additive: without a scenario assigned the actor's behaviour is unchanged.

  • A Content/Samples folder of examples. The plugin now ships a folder of ready-made assets: the DA_Preset_IronFence preset, the DA_Preset_Tower_* set and the DA_Scenario_GrowingTower scenario (a hexagonal tower that grows from the ground up). Use them as-is via Apply Preset / Build Scenario, or as a starting point for your own styles.

  • Style presets. A new SplineCraft Preset asset type stores a whole structure setup: mode, Posts, Tubes, Sections, Knobs, Free Knobs, Polygons, collision, the seed and Mobility. The actor gains a Preset field and two buttons — Apply Preset and Save To Preset. This lets you build a library of styles and move them between levels and projects. A preset deliberately does not touch the spline shape, the alignment tools, Spline Close Loop, the openings or Design Notes. Ready-made samples are in Content/Samples.

  • Openings — gates, wickets, passages. A new OPENINGS section: a list of openings, each defined by a start and width in centimetres along the spline plus checkboxes for which elements it touches (Posts / Knobs / Sections / Tubes). Points are removed if they fall strictly inside an opening; sections and tubes if they overlap it. An element exactly on the border stays, so the gate posts on both sides survive. Works in Line and Curve. In the editor every opening is highlighted with an orange frame in the viewport (the Show Openings In Viewport switch; never drawn in game). By default the list is empty — existing scenes are unchanged.

  • Random Seed — reproducible randomization. The Randomization section gains a Use Random Seed checkbox and a Random Seed field: with one seed the structure is built identically every time, and two identically configured actors look identical. The Randomize Seed button picks a new variation. The seed covers everything: scale, paddings, shift, rotation, Flip and the random mesh choice. By default the checkbox is off — existing scenes behave as before.

  • Collision settings. A new Collision section: a collision profile, hit- and overlap-event generation, and a separate toggle for building polygon collision. The settings apply to every generated component alike — instanced meshes, spline meshes and polygons. Previously collision could not be configured at all: spline meshes had it hard-wired to Query Only, and instanced meshes were left at the engine default. Along with this, the collision events OnSplineCraft{Section,Tube,Post,Knob}HitEvent started working for the first time — they are enabled by the Generate Hit Events checkbox (which needs a profile with physics collision, such as BlockAll). Turned on with the Override Collision flag; while it is off the behaviour is unchanged.

  • Component counter in Details. A new read-only Stats section shows what the last build cost: how many instanced components, how many instances in total, how many spline meshes (their count climbs fast in Curve mode) and how many procedural meshes for polygons.

  • Four new point-alignment tools. Added alongside the existing Ellipse, Rectangle, Line, Sinusoid, Uniform and Bind To Surface:

  • Arc — part of an ellipse: set the start angle and the sweep;
  • Regular Polygon — a closed regular polygon with equal sides; the start angle rotates the shape in place, the Sharp Corners checkbox keeps the sides straight;
  • Spiral — a spiral, and a helix once it has height: the diameter changes from start to end, the number of turns is fractional;
  • Zigzag — points alternate to either side of the X axis, sideways or vertically.

For Arc and Spiral the points are spaced evenly along the curve by default (the Even Spacing checkbox). The Utils panel is cleaner: only the selected tool's options are shown, and the dropdown has tooltips.

  • Catenary — a hanging chain. Another alignment tool: the curve a chain takes when it hangs freely. Set the span and the sag depth; the ends stay level with the actor and the middle drops by exactly the given amount. A negative sag turns the curve over and arches it upwards — the shape of a real arched bridge. The points are spaced evenly along the curve by default.

  • Follow Spline — laying out along another spline. A new tool: point it at another actor with a SplineComponent (a road, a river, a cliff edge, a ready path) and the points are copied from it, so the fence/railing runs right along it. Lateral Offset moves them a set distance to the side, staying strictly parallel through corners. Reverse Direction flips the walk, Match Reference Height takes the height from the reference or keeps every point level with the actor. Each point's type and the closed-loop state are carried over from the reference.

  • Polygons along the curve. A polygon gains a Follow Curve checkbox: previously an edge ran as a straight chord from one spline point to the next, so a curved spline gave a polygon with straight sides. Now the outline is sampled along the curve itself. The step is set by the Curve Resolution field (cm). Off by default — existing polygons are unchanged.

  • Arbitrary polygon shapes. Polygon caps used to be triangulated with a fan, so only convex outlines closed correctly — on a concave one (L-shaped, star-shaped, comb) the cap overlapped itself. Ear clipping is now used: any non-self-intersecting outline is supported, in either winding direction and with the collinear points the alignment tools produce. A self-intersecting outline falls back to the previous fan.

Fixed

  • Rectangle alignment tool — even spacing. Points are now spread along the edges in proportion to edge length, so the spacing is as even as possible all the way round a non-square rectangle (before, every edge got the same number of points regardless of length). With Bevel > 0 the tool no longer subtracts 4 from the point count on every rebuild — a bevelled rectangle used to lose points and collapse as you tweaked it.

  • Merge to Static Mesh now also bakes the geometry of an active Build Scenario preview (the child step actors), so a structure designed as a growing scenario can be merged into one mesh by scrubbing Preview Progress up first. When there is genuinely nothing to bake, the action now reports it with a message instead of doing nothing silently.

  • Merge to Static Mesh lost polygons. The merge only collected static-mesh components (posts, sections, tubes, knobs), and polygons are a procedural mesh of a different type that the filter discarded. Now each polygon is baked into a temporary static mesh before the merge and takes part in the combine alongside the rest.

  • The alignment tools overwrote manual point edits. The selected tool rebuilt the spline on any change to the actor, including while a point was being dragged, so the edit disappeared under the cursor. Now a tool only runs when one of its own settings changes. The Apply Point Layout button lays the points out again when it is wanted.

  • Bind To Surface missed the ground. The end of the trace ray was built by subtracting the point's own X and Y, so the ray leaned towards the world origin: the further the structure stood from that origin, the more the trace missed. Now the ray goes straight down, and the search distance up and down is set by separate fields.

  • Bind To Surface: "Vertical Points" turned points the wrong way. The tangent was replaced with a forward constant, so every point aimed along local X regardless of which way the spline ran. Now the tangent is only laid flat, keeping its direction and length.

  • Horizontal Shift on corners. A shifted row did not stay strictly parallel to the original: corners were pulled inwards and skewed towards the longer segment. The shift is now built as a parallel offset (a mitre). Applies to Posts, Knobs, Sections, Tubes, Polygons in Line mode; straight runs are unchanged.

  • Polygons: wrong lighting and junk geometry. The normals array was twice as long as the vertex array, so the engine discarded it entirely and assigned every vertex an "up" normal — the side walls lit as if horizontal. On top of that each wall was added four times, which caused z-fighting. The geometry was rewritten: caps and walls now have their own vertices and normals, tangents were added, and the wall unwrap runs along the perimeter and up the height. The winding is derived from the signed area, so a clockwise polygon no longer comes out inside-out.

  • Polygons used another element's point-index map. Polygons walk every spline point but used the set of active indexes left behind by the last Section/Tube — some points collapsed. A polygon now builds its own index map.

  • Closed spline: the first point was not treated as a corner. At the seam of the loop the shift was computed as if for the end of an open spline.

  • Hit events did not fire for Tube / Post / Knob in Line mode. The hit-event binding for Instanced Static Mesh components had an incorrect method pointer, so the OnSplineCraftTubeHitEvent, OnSplineCraftPostHitEvent and OnSplineCraftKnobHitEvent delegates were not bound. Fixed.

  • FSCPolygon::Material had no initializer, which caused a validation error on startup on UE 5.8. Added = nullptr.