During my time as a Technical Artist on the Galactic Annihilation team, I created a spline mesh tread system for Industrial Annihilation that instanced tread pieces along a spline, creating completed treads that could be animated along the spline. This allowed for higher quality animation than what could be achieved through material animation, but didn't require extra effort from the Animation team side; instead, with a quick float value update, the treads can easily be sped forward, slowed, reversed, and the tread shape can easily be updated to match virtually any spline shape.