Help with a Surface + SBox+ 4 different geometries + 1 attractor

I'm really new to this and my brain's dead so please bare with me.

What I'm trying to do is have 4 different geometries, box morphed onto a surface, and get them to respond to 1 attractor. The 4 geometries vary in -what I think is called- "porosity".

As the attractor approaches the surface, I'm trying to get the geometry with the widest hole to be at the surface closest to the attractor, and the geometry with the second widest hole to follow after, followed by the geometry nearly closed up and the geometry closed up as they get further away from the attractor. How do I get this sort of pattern going? Is it to do with a strength of a vector (if such exists)?

Right now, I can normally do this with two different geometries on a surface and get it to respond to an attractor. However, it's not working with this one. Strange enough, the SBox is red but it still manages to spread the geometry on the surface.

I hope I'm not asking for too much. And I'd be really greatful if someone could please help me! I hope what I said makes some sense.

Attachments:

help.3dm, 23 MB
help.ghx, 139 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Andrew Heumann on April 9, 2010 at 8:03am

Attached is a file that shows how I would approach it - essentially, I am putting all four geometries in a single list, and then converting the distance measurements into integers from 0-3 to serve as the indices to pull from the list. The reason your surface box component is showing up red is because you are applying it to a trimmed surface instead of a UV-complete surface. The null values you're getting back are all the boxes it can't evaluate because they would lie past the trim. It seems to work nonetheless (although you're only getting 72 boxes instead of 144) but if you really wanted to fix it you could construct a new surface (by revolving a quarter circle 360 degrees about an axis, for example) to replace the trimmed surface.

Hope this helps!

Andrew

Attachments:

multipleComponentAggregation.ghx, 177 KB

Permalink Reply by Jeremy Crocker on April 9, 2010 at 8:39am

Thanks for that, Andrew. Though I think I might have phrased myself wrong. Unfortunately, I don't really want all four geometries to overlap each other.

I've sort of solved what I want. You can have a look at it to see what I meant to ask. Pretty much all of it is from tedngai.net. A mash of his tutorial on 'component population on mesh' and 'incident solar: current time'. That has achieved close to something that I want. I was hoping to use an attractor instead of color mapping. Would you by any chance know how to lessen the UV points on the mesh? This is my first time using meshes.

Warning you, the file takes a while to load. Or perhaps it's the computer I'm using. Is there a way of getting the file to work faster? 'Cause I plan on using the geometries from the previous files and a more complex surface (the geometries in this file are different just to illustrate what I'm trying to achieve).

Thanks again!

Attachments: