uniform points on surface

Does anybody knows how can I place a set of points with similar distance between them on a irregular surface? (undevelopable)

If I divide a surface, depending on u and v coordinates those points will be placed closer or farther if curvature is concave or convex or if u and v lines on surface are closer.

I dont necessarity need a very regular distribution, so I tried to use random points but allwais I have to project sometime and i have a bigger density of points someware.

I check for tesellation tools but I couldn´t do anything.

any suggestions?

Thanks

Tags: divide, points, random, surface, tesellation

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Permalink Reply by David Rutten on March 16, 2010 at 6:25am

Similar distance or identical distance?

Identical is mathematically impossible, except on a very small subset of surfaces and point-counts.

Similar will most likely involve some sort of iterative algorithm that keeps on jiggling points until an acceptable solution is reached.

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

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Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on March 16, 2010 at 6:52am

Talking of iterative jiggling of points constrained to surfaces - just got this working properly in Kangaroo last night!

and before anyone else asks again - soon. very soon

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Permalink Reply by Santiago Martín Laguna on March 16, 2010 at 7:55am

I need a similar distance, fortunately !

So, what you mean it is possible with Kangaroo?

I saw your video:
http://vimeo.com/10166848

is it possible to drop those balls into a nurb and take their center?

I need to ask it...(sorry) when?

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Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on March 16, 2010 at 10:40am

See the video i just posted for what I mean. That's just a rough demo, and you'd probably need to play with the forces a bit to get a really nice distribution, but you get the picture.

One nice use of this would be to put tangent planes at these points then intersect them with each other to get a watertight panelling of planar hexagons/pentagons on the surface.

As for dropping balls into a NURBS surface - not just yet. I've got some basic collisions sorted, but am still working on the more general collision response.

End of the week :)