Outstanding work! Unfortunately the "MeshMachine" can't be downloaded neighter by left nor right click. Seems like somethings get blocked.. 

This is a game changer! Love the curvature adaptivity.

Thanks, I've updated the files now, hopefully that works

Object: MeshMachineComponent (level 1)
{
Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
TargetInvocationException
}

Object: MeshMachineComponent (level 2)
{
Could not load file or assembly 'Plankton, Version=0.3.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
FileNotFoundException
}

Thank you - half edge meshes really rock :)

I wanted to ask if the version with interpolation between multiple target lengths will be also incorporated into kangaroo? Hope so because it is really perfect for making gradual changes in the tessellation of a structures.

I just saw you posted a version without a timer in the original thread. Would it be possible to post something similar for the interpolation between multiple target lengths example?

Because I would like to incorporate it in a automated generation process.     

This is really awesome!

Can you share the grasshopper file that you are using in the first video?

Thanks

it feels like it is Christmas! great stuff, super exited....

Thanks for sharing, fantastic research Daniel!!!!!!!!

best 

Iker

Hi Christian,

Yes, I'll add a version with the interpolated edge lengths - Maybe as another component, as I think this one already has a lot of inputs.

One question I had here for users is about useful ways to control these edge lengths. Is interpolating between values given at a few sample points a good way to do it?

Another option might be to use mesh colours - so you could paint on regions of density using UTO's MeshPaint3d.

and yes - I'll do a timer free version too. I'm also working on a dedicated timer free version of the main Kangaroo component that keeps all the iteration internal and outputs only once final equilibrium is reached (As this is no longer the 'live' interactive physics as usual, but it's not really 'dead' I'm thinking maybe zombie kangaroo for the name!)

Shima - The file used in the first video is the bottom group in the example definition. Just bake the curves into Rhino and reference them back in, then you can move them while it is running.

Thanks Daniel, well the problem that I'm having is that the grasshopper can't load the MeshMachineComponent! I downloaded the above file and copied in my library, do you have an idea why it is not loading? It also doesn't recognize the PlanktonMesh component!

So awesome! 

Has anyone successfully loaded this from the files above? I'm trying to figure out what could have gone wrong here, and it would help to know if it is broken for all or just some of you.

Amazing job!

Amazing.!

all working ok with gh 09.0070 and the files you provided

Thanks ng5.

Anyone who it is not loading for please double check - all 3 files (Plankton.gha, Plankton.dll, and MeshMachine.gha) are in the libraries folder, and each one has been checked to see it is unblocked. The version of the Plankton libraries posted above is a special build, and it will not work with the 0.3.0 release found on the Plankton group page. Also fully close Rhino and re-open.

If it is still not loading please let me know.

Hello Daniel,

also working for me on 0.9.0075

Great news and a bunch of good ideas. I would definitely vote for controlling the edge lengths with vertex colors. It is a little bit more complicated but you can control them much preciser. You don't even have to use uto's mesh paint categorically - with components like mesh spray or mesh or mesh blur you could really create well defined transitions.

And you can also quite easily color a mesh according to the distance to some points if you want it that way..

A "jumping dead" kangaroo would be great in that sense that you could integrate it tighter in other processes. Could this also have a slider input (from 0 to 1) where you can iterate throught the steps like on a kind of timeline?

Not Working in here!!!

Hey Daniel! First Many Thanks for sharing your Awesome Plugins...

I did all As descripted:

1) copy all the above posted files to the libraries file, overwriting the old ones

2) I have checked if they're blocked (by opening the attributes tabs, and checking if they can be written)

I still have the problem that Meshmachine cannot load, because Plankton.dll is ALSO unable to load...

Im running in the last version of grasshopper...

i've tried this so far:

i copied the plankton.dll from Kangaroo in (overwriting the One ABOVE) and it runs, BUT the Kangaroo doesnt want to Jump :)

many thanks for your answer

Great job.It works well.But there are two Plankton.dll.The old one is from Kangaroo 0096.Can I delete the old one?

Amazing work, Daniel! 

Fantastic！Thank you. Thank you for letting me know so many things.

I agree mesh colour would be a great control. So much flexibility. 

More than making the components work without a timer (you can already do this Kangaroo by increasing the subiterations and inputting a true and a false value to the start input. You can also do it with the remesher using a list of true, false, false, false... values but has the added lag of solveinstance on every iteration) it would be great if you could have parallel simulations running in the same component.

In the case of the remesher, if you connect a list of objects it will have a different simulation for each object (right now you can join a list of meshes into a single one but its not the same, it might screw up the object order after disjoining them and it's slower and so on).

In the case of Kangaroo, one simulation per branch of forces and anchor points. The tricky part would be the geometry input. Maybe if you have two simulations, all branches of geometry starting with {0;*} will be mapped to the first simulation, all starting with {1;*} mapped to the second and so on.

GREAT tool!

love the zombie physics as well

Daniel, I'm only beginning to venture into the possibilities Kangaroo allows, yet I already feel an urge to join the choir of people who express their gratitude. Grasshopper itself is already super exciting. The videos you post are even more shocking. I'll wait for the future stable release as I need to understand the Kangaroo basics first, but I already know for which projects of mine I will want to use these new features and I totally can't wait.

Thank you!

Daniel, would you be able to tell me a little more about the 'flip' input. valence or angle based. 

Does the valence option prioritise keeping the valence variation to a minimum?

Anything like described here: http://www.grasshopper3d.com/profiles/blogs/mesh-optimization

Thanks everyone for the encouragement!

Panhao - yes, this Plankton dll can replace the old one from Kangaroo 0096

Vicente - I think making a non-timer version should also automatically solve the issue of allowing different meshes on different data branches, because all iterations on one mesh item would be happening within a single solveinstance.

It is a bit more complex with the non-timer Kangaroo, because I want to also allow people to use forces which change their parameters from one iteration to the next (such as hinges with a rest angle which varies over the course of the simulation).

Nick - in both cases the flipping is based on the 4 vertices of a pair of triangles:

The angle based option decides whether to flip each internal edge depending on the sum of the marked angles (choosing the one which gives the smaller value).

The valence based option chooses whether to flip the edge depending on the total valence error over these 4 vertices.

The valence error is how much each valence differs from the ideal (6 for internal vertices, and 4 for boundary vertices). So in the picture above the left version has valences of 5,7,6,7 giving a total error of 1+1+0+1=3, while the right version is better with 6,6,7,6 giving 0+0+1+0=1

Hi Daniel,

I installed the files, replacing the old ones and got a loading errors message:

Object: MeshMachineComponent (level 1)
{
Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
TargetInvocationException
}

Object: MeshMachineComponent (level 2)
{
Could not load file or assembly 'Plankton, Version=0.3.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
FileNotFoundException
}

how can I fix it?

Thanx!

Thanks for explanation Daniel, that makes sense, i was playing around creating a mesh that rapidly changed from huge faces to tiny faces, and inevitably i was producing faces with very high valence. I was trying both options with similar results, but obviously thats just an issue with high contrast face size.

Hello Daniel !

Great tool, thanks for sharing, it works perfect !!! I am playing with it the whole day.

Just one question. Is the mesh machine acting as a particle-spring system ? Could we set the restlength and stiffness here? Or are those parameters somehow included in the "pull" ?

It seems that if we set pull to 0 we obtain something like a minimal surface, similar to what we get with Kangaroo physics if set spring length is 0. Is that right ?

FixC or FixV looks like setting the anchorpoints. Are these two equivalent methods for dynamic relaxation? 

Does it make sense to use a combination of the two, remeshing first and then feeding the new mesh into Kangaroo physics?

It works great and i experimented with minimal surfaces, using the fourth one of your examples and moving the two circles afterwards.But the moment I tried to change the length on the slider it throws an exception

Problem is, that even if I go one step back, it will not work and I would need to extract new boundaries from the initial surface, if I use the existing ones, as they are already moved, they are not attached on the surface, and it will create a mesh without holes.

I tried the same example several times. Sometimes it works (as in the first pic) sometimes not, and it starts to peel off from the corners towards the center before it throws an exception. Any suggestions?

I just want to understand how to avoid this problem from happening, cause it does NOT happen all the times.

If it does happen, some seconds before it throws an exception it starts to peel like this, from the corners inwards:

As I did the same experiment many times I noticed that the failure does not relate to the value in length... but to something else that I cannot figure out. It only occurs when I change the value in the slider, but NOT always

Thanks in advance,

ioanna

Hi all,

I got the same trouble as shalom buberman. As I've just started in grasshopper so have no clue to solve this, really need your advises.

Here is the error: 

Object: MeshMachineComponent (level 1)
{
Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
TargetInvocationException
}

Object: MeshMachineComponent (level 2)
{
Could not load file or assembly 'Plankton, Version=0.3.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
FileNotFoundException
}

Thanks and regards!

Loc.

For those having loading errors, please double check that all the .dll and .gha files are unblocked.

Hi Ioanna, I'll try and answer your questions-

-It is working in a similar way to dynamic relaxation of spring networks in the main Kangaroo engine, but not exactly the same. I've not included any momentum effects in MeshMachine, and the forces come not from springs, but from Laplacian smoothing (There are also 3 different types of smoothing included - tangential only, uniform weighted, and cotan weighted. The latter allows more accurate minimal surface generation than with springs. I'm planning to add more user control over which combinations of these are used, but also want to keep the interface simple.)

In later versions of Kangaroo I do plan to make it possible to combine all the usual forces with the remeshing, but because vertices get added and removed, this involves changes in the way particles are indexed. In the meantime - yes it does make sense to use the remesher then perform further optimization in Kangaroo.

-Your problem with the mesh peeling away from the corners might be fixed by including the corners as fixed vertices, and also splitting the fixed boundary curves at the corners (so the rectangle would be 4 line segments). I think what is happening is that boundary vertices near the corner are jumping from one side to the other, and separating the sides should prevent that from happening.

Thank you Daniel !

What you explain makes perfect sense. I am mainly interested in form-finding of tensile structures. So I suppose that using either remesher or springs will lead to good approximations of a membrane.

One last clarification, in case I remesh and then otpimize in Kangaroo. If points are in an unstable condition during the remeshing, I would need to bake the geometry after remesher and feed it back to Kangaroo to perform other simulations, right ? Or is there a way to fix some state of the simulation and use it as output for further optimization?

Thanks again and congrats for the great work you are doing ! Kangaroo rocks !

yes - if you are remeshing and then want to optimize the shape further in Kangaroo, you need to stop the remeshing first, and bake or internalize the mesh.

Dr. Piker,

I have a question about webbed toes.... They are not meant to be webbed, mesh machine is giving me them... What would you recommend? The edge of the form is a fixC curve, but the mesh grows past boundary.

Hi Daniel,

thanks a lot for this amazing tool!

Is it possible that at each vertex six faces meet (like in the majority if cases) and not sometimes four, five or seven?

Wieland

Daniel, Have you tried switching the 'flip' input to Valence? Instead of the default angle based remeshing.

copied from previous comment by Daniel:

The angle based option decides whether to flip each internal edge depending on the sum of the marked angles (choosing the one which gives the smaller value).

The valence based option chooses whether to flip the edge depending on the total valence error over these 4 vertices.

The valence error is how much each valence differs from the ideal (6 for internal vertices, and 4 for boundary vertices). So in the picture above the left version has valences of 5,7,6,7 giving a total error of 1+1+0+1=3, while the right version is better with 6,6,7,6 giving 0+0+1+0=1

First of all a big thank you, Daniel!

I think the Mesh Machine performs amazingly well. I have worked with it a lot over the last month and its been incredibly useful and reliable.

Purely from a workflow perspective I wanted to make two suggestions to make it work even better (for me and hopefully also others).

1) Option for an input/start mesh:

The BREP input is great as you get the highest possible resolution in the target geometry, which is then converted to a mesh internally.

It would be great to be able to input a optional starting mesh, too. This would protect us from potentially running out of memory at a reset (due to a combination of large geometry and small edge length setting), but also allow to further optimise an existing mesh (I often start from meshes, which I heavily subdivide to achieve smoothness, which can make the reset very slow).

2) Dual support:

You already mentioned in your email that it would be possible to re-mesh with a focus on the edge-lengths of the dual, while flipping edges in the triangular mesh.

It would be great to have a such DUAL mode that also gives the options to output as a pmesh.

Thanks, again!

Hi Daniel,  

Can you plaese help me with the installation. Actually I followed what is written here, I copied the 3 files into the libraries, but after restarting Grashopper I got erros messages as can seen ont aattached image...

Thanks in advance!

Hi Daniel,

is there a possibility to make this work for 3d "mesh", e.x. take "Populate 3D" Component and generate connections between like you do it here.

Hi Daniel,

thanks for the quick reply. I searched the forum for what you mentioned at the end, but couldnt find the conversation you refered to. Could you drop the link?

Basically... I would like to create a structure as effiecient as 2D Delaunay, so basically a 3D Delaunay. I tried with Proximity (not good as it fails to make connections) and Voronoi 3D (posted below). I am planning to create a structure like this with almost 50.000 edges and trying to find a better way to do it.

Many thanks,

Oliver

I found a good reference for what I'm trying to achieve, I guess.

http://raweb.inria.fr/rapportsactivite/RA2009/geometrica/uid16.html

Hi,

I dont know if it is of any use - but a while ago I used the MiConvexHull to generate 3D delaunay meshes = tetrahedrons.

here you are:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/738oqu01bjivkg5/AACHj6C6d-JK3THv9ACmb6Um...

best

Robert

Hi Robert,

thanks for the quick reply. Your def requires "StarMath.dll" and "MIConvexHullPlugin.dll", which it seems I'm not able to find as public download.

Many thanks for your help,

Oliver

You cant see the subfolder on my dropbox?

They're in there..

Works great. Many thanks!

Would it be possible to use Roberts 3D Delaunay  as a dynamic mesh which's density can be controlled?