Adopt the baked-first workflow
Spline Architect assumes your production output is baked geometry, and that you get there by editing a live preview - not by committing early and hoping. One habit makes the whole plugin behave predictably: treat baking as a checkpoint, not a finish line.
The loop
- Leave Wall, Building, Curve, and Streets actors in Baked generation mode while you author. This does not bake anything by itself - it declares what the output is for.
- Edit splines, presets, custom pieces, Booleans, and seeds. The actor regenerates a live preview after every change.
- When a design is ready, select any part of the connected stack and run Bake Connected. The preview becomes persistent components.
- Change something later and the affected output unbakes itself, back to a live preview. Spline Architect never silently re-commits a bake, and it never leaves stale baked geometry standing either.
- Look at the regenerated result, then run Rebake Connected.
The point of step 4: you can always trust what you see. If it is baked, it matches its inputs; if an input changed, you are looking at the new preview and the rebake is yours to make.
Choose a bake method
| Method | Pick it when | The cost |
|---|---|---|
| Components | Pieces must stay individually selectable and editable after baking. | The most components and draw calls. |
| Instanced | The usual choice: repeated identical pieces, good draw-call behavior, instance custom data. | Instances are not ordinary editable components. |
| Hierarchical Instanced | Large scenes that want per-instance LOD and culling. | More overhead; editing individual instances is limited. |
Use Static mobility unless the output genuinely has to move - anything else costs lighting and rendering assumptions.
Runtime generation
Runtime mode is for gameplay that must build or change geometry during play. Output is transient: the running game regenerates it, and no editor assets are created. It is not a faster way to author levels - before choosing it for an environment, check the gameplay cost, collision needs, replication plan, and platform budget.
Continue with Baking and rebaking for the connected commands, prebaked corners, save behavior, and Diagnostics.