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Instant Pipes

An editor tool for procedurally generating pipes by just dragging the cursor from start to end — the pipe will find the path in a customizable way.

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Compatibility

Unity 2019.4 or higher.

Installation

Add the package to your project via the Package Manager using the Git URL https://github.com/leth4/InstantPipes.git. You can also clone the repository and point the Package Manager to your local copy.

Usage

Starting out

  1. Create an empty GameObject and set its world position to zero.
  2. Add a Pipe Generator component.
  3. Select a material for the Material property.

If you're facing problems, visit the troubleshooting section.

Ctrl+Z works with all actions. When you're commited to the pipes, you can just remove the component, the mesh will stay.

Pipes Settings

  • Curvature changes the length of the curved parts, making pipes appear more or less curvy. Note that it applies after pathfinding, so in some cases high curvature value can make pipes intersect.
  • Edges property selects how many edges the pipes will have, and Segments is the amount of subdivisions in curved parts.
  • You can toggle Rings and End Caps and separately set up their radius and thickness.
  • Additionally, you can toggle Extrusion under the Rings label, replacing rings with extruded curved elements, like on plastic pipes.

Using pathfinding

In the component inspector, select the Create tab. Now in the scene view start dragging your cursor where you want the pipe to start, end let go where you want it to end; a pipe will appear.

The tool uses A* pathfinding without a predefined grid — by raycasting from a point to the next points. Pipes can only detect colliders as obstacles.

Property Explanation
Preview Path Will preview how the pipe will look like while dragging. Can be slow with complex pipes!
Amount How many pipes will be created at once; each one will have an individual path.
Max Iterations How many points will the algorithm check before giving up.
Grid Y Angle Rotates the Y axis of the pathfinding grid that every pipes have to follow.
Grid Size The distance between searched points; making it too small can produce bad results.
Height How high the first and the last segment of a pipe will be. This value can't be smaller than grid size.
Chaos Adds randomness to the pathfinding, making paths twisted and chaotic.
Straight Priority Makes the algorithm prefer straight paths over turns.
Near Obstacle Priority Makes the pipes stay close to obstacles.

image

Manual Editing

In the component inspector, select the Edit tab. Select one of the points in the scene view by clicking on it, and then you can:

  • Move the selected points in the scene view
  • Input the exact positions for the selected points in the inspector
  • Delete the point or the entire pipe via a button in the inspector
  • Insert a new point via a button in the inspector

Hold shift to select multiple points. Press A to select every point of the selected pipe.

Every pipe is a separate submesh, so you can assign separate materials by dragging them into the scene view.

Troubleshooting

Getting an error when trying to build

  • That was recently patched, so please update the package or download the latest version of the tool.

Pipes appear squashed

  • Toggle and re-toggle rings, that should fix it. Will hopefully find a proper fix soon.

Dragging my cursor doesn't do anything

  • Make sure you have the Create tab selected
  • Make sure you're pointing at a surface with a collider
  • Make sure Gizmos are enabled
  • If nothing else helped, try resetting the editor layout to default

Pipes can't find a way

  • Set the Iterations higher, that will make the algorithm try for longer before giving up
  • Set the Grid Size higher, this way the algorithm can find a way with less iterations
  • Tone down the Chaos, Straight Priority and Near Obstacle Priority values, those make it harder to find a way