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Today we speculated on how to get AI to do mundane tasks like closing 5 point patches in A:M. I think the rules for 5-point patchs are like this... A patch is a set of 3, 4 or 5 CPs connected by two or more splines. Each CP in the set is connected by splines to two and only two other CPs in the set. For any two CPs in the set, a spline that connects them has no other CPs between the two CPs. (This will be true only for patches in which each side is a different spline.) [some rule about how the splines can be followed to loop around the patch to all the other CPs and return to the starting CP] If a set of five points meets those rules it can be a five-point patch. However, Rodney notes... What is a CP? What is a Spline? Perhaps we can deduce some rules from a sample file like this. A Spline is a sequence of CPs Each CP is defined by a 6-digit number that defines some style properties like peaked v. unpeaked a 0 or 1 that flags if the CP is a duplicate of an existing CP a unique ID number x position y position z position two dots means bias values are defaults if the duplicate flag is a 1 then the ID number is followed by the ID number of an existing CP and the XYZ info will be taken from that existing CP. 262145 is binary 0100 0000 0000 0000 0001 This signifies a Smooth CP 262144 is binary 0100 0000 0000 0000 0000 This signifies a Peaked CP

I think counting splines and control points is the right idea. We know that every CP on a five pointer is five spline segments away from itself... If we limit our search to finding "proper" five-pointers, five-pointers that have a different spline on each side, we could just check every five-segment path from a CP that changes splines at each intersection. If a five-segment path doesn't lead back to the starting CP then that set of CPs is not a five-pointer. If a five-segment path leads back to the starting CP, then that set of CPs can be made a five-pointer... There should be 4 * 2^4, or 64, possible paths to check for each CP. in a 2000 CP model that would be 128,000 paths to check. If each path took 1/100th of a second to check, the whole model would take 21.3 minutes. The number of paths to check could be greatly reduced by limiting the search to the "current selection".

wow cool ! I used it in a video!

newworldexplode3d.mov mp4 version: newworldexplode3d.mp4 redid the animation and slowed is down a little need some comments of what you like or what you think needs tweaking or any questions you may have be glad to answer PRJ: newworldexplode3.zip