Instant Boris Effects

Chapter 6

Splines

Before computer animation, splines referred to the thin, flexible pieces of wood or metal used to draw curves in drafting and carpentry. In 3D animation and computer drawing applications, splines are vector-based curves created with mathematical calculations that determine the height and steepness of the curve. In Boris applications, splines are any lines or shapes created with a set of vector points and any number of Bézier curves. Splines are useful for creating shapes because you can resize them with no quality loss and alter their points at any time. You can even create a spline object and change its shape and size over time with keyframed control. In this section, we’ll look at spline primitives and spline objects as they ...