Released: Hephauestus Grid Pathfinding

Grid based pathfinding solution with automatic grid generation and fast path calculation.

An easy to use system that can automatically generate the required grid for pathfinding for any Playcanvas scene on runtime.

Demo sandbox: https://playcanv.as/p/TCk8mFpT/

Features:

  • Flat surfaces, stairs and custom waypoints supported.
  • Very fast path calculation (2-4ms).
  • Grid calculation happens on runtime, no baking required.
  • Special animator class can be used to easily animate any Playcanvas entity.
  • Pause, resume, stop animation methods provided.
  • No coding required, drag and drop scripts.
  • Full source code provided.
  • A fully working Playcanvas project is provided with a simple physics based character controller (kinematic body).

Available now: https://pic.pirron-rodon.one/

7 Likes

I’ve tried loading the sandbox few times, it loads after about 10 seconds, but Chrome (MacOS) becomes very slow to respond - even switching tabs takes 5+ seconds. And so I cannot see how pathfinding works, as it doesn’t seem to refresh.

Hi @mvaligursky,

Thanks for the feedback, what kind of Mac computer are you running on? It seems to be working fine on iOS devices (iPhone/iPad).

I’ve disabled the post process effect we had on top, in case this fixes your issue. Could you try again loading this new build?

Hi Leonidas,

That fixed it for me. I have 2019 MacBook Pro 6 core 2.6GHZ i7, with Radeon 555X. It’s connected to 4k screen so plenty of pixels to postprocess - but still, single frame took about 5 seconds, and I was running in smaller window too.

Cheers,
Martin

1 Like

This looks amazing!

Why do we always have to buy the extensions,why not just add some new cool features to the editor itself,I mean I get you gotta make money but you don’t have to make every extension require pay.

Send me a PM and let’s see what we can do about it :slight_smile:

Leonidas is not part of the PlayCanvas team and he and his company spends a lot of time developing these extensions. It makes sense to pay for this work.

2 Likes

I wish we were able to find a sustainable way to provide our extensions for free, and also open source them.

Right now though we make a living out of them as @yaustar said. By the way since the start of this week all of our extensions have been discounted by 30-40%, there will be an announcement coming.

If you need the plugins and are charging for your work, the plugins are generally worth the price. We’ve been very happy with the Object Outline plugin. But if you aren’t making money with the projects that you are creating, then I understand how having to pay can be an issue.

It is actually amazing to me how much free stuff and how much free assistance is out there. When I was younger, this kind of access to free stuff was unheard of. Today, you can do more (a lot more actually) in 3D for free (or nearly free) than you could in 1996 with $60,000 invested in SGI gear and software. While truly wonderful, this abundance of free stuff can skew one’s perspective on what people need to do to earn a living and therefore what a person should reasonably expect.

2 Likes

Is this available to buy?

Hi @adamburgess38,

No, it was deprecated in favor of this more robust, nav mesh based, solution:

If I were to purchase this, would the movement be easily alterable to a grid, in the format where it will move how your previous package did? Thank you