s levels of detail by subdividing a 6 sided cube mesh and projecting its vertices according to a referenced height map. This is one of the standard conventions for building full sizes planets. At the lowest level (0) the mesh planet is made of 6 pieces(each 32x32 resolution). The next level down (1) is made of 24 pieces... 6 divided by 4 = 24. Level (2) is 96 quads etc etc. The script will generate each quad at its sub-division level and compare edge vertices to neighboring quads. It will then make sure any shared vertices are in fact at the same projected vector. This ensures a planet quad with edge vertices that match.
The problems comes in texturing each quad.
If I build the quad as a nurb surface from points I can place the texture easily because each surface UV maps squarely to my texture map (which is also square).
If I build the quad as a mesh I cannot just apply the square texture to the mesh UVs. This is because when you unwrap the UVs from a mesh they will not unwrap like a nurb surface's UVs. Therefore to get the correct mapping I would have to manipulate each UV back to an evenly aligned array (which is 1024 points in a 32x32 resolution UV). Maya and blender have 'relax uv' and 'align UV' functions but they don't do the trick and manual corrections are out of the question. So why not skip the mesh method and use the nurb method?
I did this and there is a trade off. The nurb will accept the material texture I want with no other work on my end but when I export the object as an .obj rhino creates its own mesh to describe the nurb(with various unsatisfactory setting options). This works great up to a point because at some level the interpreted mesh will have vertices that do no match at the edges, ie .. creating visible seams in the mesh. The picture below is the nearly seamless planet at LOD(1) made of 24 quads, each with 32x32 vertice resolution and a 512x512 jpg texture running in Unity3d 5. It works but at close level there are seams. This will be resolved simply by having the next LOD(x) instantiate before getting close enough to see the seam but at core nerd level I want the seamless mesh.
So, I can make the seamless mesh but I can not realistically texture map it. I can also make the nurb surface from points and texture it at the expense of the edge vertices matching. I am at the split in the road but I want to have my cake and eat it too. Thoughts, comments, trolls...?
Thanks for reading =)
Footnote: For you pros I am not using seamless noise across the map I am using grasshopper to sew up my otherwise non perfect edges.
Other programs in the pipeline:
-WorldMachine 2
-Wilbur
-Photoshop
-Unity3d…
(1) I have been exporting small sections of a larger model into Maya from Rhino as FBX. In Maya I rotate and scale the models (-90 in X, Scale XYZ 0.001). The Named Views are being saved, but do not have a successful import into the Maya model. They do not appear as in Rhino, and the problem is not solved by scaling or rotating the cameras.
(2) If I try going the other direction, the cameras exported from Maya as FBX are also not aligning with the model in Rhino as they are in Maya.. I will do my best to post some images of the problem and hope you can help.
error !!
This is what the named views look like
here I am trying to the other way with a good view from Maya
strange placement..
This is the best result I can achieve, after I scale the camera by 1000
Any Advice???
Thanks, Robert.
…
ysim.ning.com/
When you run the simualtion you will notice on the batch terminal that Daysim is also being called, so you may want to consider how Daysim uses Radiance files & data.
Regarding your current problem, I think you stumbled onto something weird and interesting.
Interior and exterior readings appear to differ by 40 in the best case scenarios. Even setting the transmittance to 1 yields similar results. I tried changing from cummulative sky to climate sky and got similar values. Changing the test points did nothing either.
I think, (yet I'm too lazy to prove this) that the difference in values stems from diffuse radiation over the sky dome.
If you delete everything except the glass you'll notice that interior values are like 80-90% of the exterior values (this seems like the expected behaviour with a transmittance of 1). So, if we consider that a vertical window, part of an opaque box, is receiving radiation from 25% of a sphere, as you start to inset the interior test points the radiation they receive will be a fraction of the 25%.
Let me try to explain this better...The exterior surface receives radiation from a section of a sphere calculated by 180degrees on the xy plane (let’s call this angle theta) and by 90degrees (let’s call this angle phi) in azimuthal elevation. If you integrate this over spherical coordinates (theta from 0 to pi; phi from 0 to pi/2) you will find that it comes to a quarter of a sphere. By comparison, the interior surface will not integrate theta from 0 to 180degrees,nor phi from 0 to 90degrees, instead it will be the subtended angle from the exterior surface as a function of their separation; the farther in you go the smaller the view of the outside.
If my hypothesis is correct there shouldn't be that much difference since the separation is only 10cms...the subtended angle would be like 170 instead of 180 for theta and 85 instead of 90 for phi...overall if you integrate both spherical areas there should only by a difference of 10%.
In conclusion, I believe the unexpected behaviour stems from the previous subtended angle thing. If direct radiation was the only factor the difference would be the aforementioned 10%, which suggests that an additional source of energy is also affected by this. Perhaps indirect and diffuse radiation from other areas of the sky dome.
I’m definitely intrigued on why this is happening. Please post if you figure it out.
Regards,
Mauricio
…
TB of RAM. I think I'm going to start a GoFundMe campaign to buy one for myself :)
2- The server's cost is about $13 an hour. I get free access to supercomputer through my university and xsede.org because I earned an NSF Honorable mention last March, however, the supercomputers available through both resources are a little complicated for me to use, as opposed to the one available from amazon that has Microsoft server 2012 already installed.
3- I wanted to run 400 annual glare simulations for 400 different views.
4- I tried a to perform annual glare simulation for one view on my Dell XPS that has Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor and 16GB of system memory. The simulation took 2 hours to complete. Radiance parameter ab was set to 6.
5- I wanted to obtain the batch file for each view so I can run them on the server. So I used the fly component to run all 400 simulations and closed the cmd windows, that wasn't bad ( for me at least) because I asked my son to this job for me, he was just glad to help me :)
6- I created one batch file using this cmd command:
dir /s /b *.bat > runall.bat
This created a file with the path to each .bat file. I edited this file in Notepad++ to include the word "start" at the beginning of each line. This was done using the "find and replace" dialogue box.
7- I split my newly created batch file into 3 batch files, each one has about 130 file names and " start" before the file names.
8- installed radiance on my server
9- Ran the first batch file on the server, this started 130 cmd windows performing my simulations, CPU usage was anywhere between 90% to 100% and about 105 GB of RAMs were used.
10. It took about 5 hours to complete all 130 simulations, I expected to run all in 2 hours but can't complain because this would've taken about 260 hours to run on my laptop. After the simulations done I ran the second and then the third batch files ( total of about 15 hours).
11. I got 400 valid dgb files. Couldn't be happier!
…
he time to work with it.
the project is about facade strips which turns along height. the top angle is
parallel to the facade and the bottom is max. 90 degrees twisted, but the strips
should turn diffrently to achieve more dinamic look.
first i have tried to achieve this by calculating distance between the rotation angle from points of the grid and a single point.
then i have tried to ad some more effecting points and used the distance to the divided surface (the circles are just to control the area of effection):
i manually lofted it.
the result is a bit annoying becouse the points that effect the angle are always visible:
i have triend to solve this by drawing a line and divided it to recieve points along the bottom of the geometry. the result is not working properly:
Anyway,
there must be a better/smoother way to achieve this. i would like to effect the twist of the surfaces by distance to a spline, but im just lost. can you help me please?
the problems im encountering:
0- distance spline to grid to effect the angle
1- list of x/y coordinates and angle of rotation for each point of the grid
2- export points to excel
3- lofting lines in one direction only (x1, x2, x3...)
4- reduce the list data to 2 decimal (0,00)
5- maybe angle from radian to degrees
thx…
te some cut sheets, but not to optmize material, rather define some cut lines. Everything that I am cutting is made of planar wood elements, but there are very specific geometries (mostly straight lines) and I have to put tolerances and radiasas at the corners in order to cut on the cnc mill. Spending time to figure out how to automate is necessary, but I am stuck!
One thing the definition is doing is taking my brep modeled components in rhino and makking them into 2d close curves and laying them side by side. It works...not ideal as its not layed out in a sheet, but that is not the most important part.
Another particular problem is that you will see some notches in the curves, which other pieces will slip into, so different slots need different specific offsets (making them larger) as a toelrance to allow for material play. This I don't even know how to set up so maybe it will just have to wait.
THE MAIN QUESTION, and super important would be, LIFESAVER:
At all 'inward' corners...which I think will always mean concave corners (most are 90 degrees, but are within to sides, instead of a corner sticking out). I'm sure its obviousy, but the reason being the outward corners a circular dril bit can cut, but inward ones need an arc profile extended beyond where the corner of the other piece will fit into. The drill bit i am using is 6mm, so 6mm diamters arcs is what i'm working with.
I have managed to put such an arc at every vertices of each cut piece. The problem being some stick outward isntead of cutting into the piece. So each one needs to be orieneted correctly. Ideally they would also only draw into inward corners, but I can always delete them out. I think maybe I am missing a more logical mathematical way of defining?
For these geometries it is not very important which side the half circle arc in on in the inward corners, but I also have some geometries that I will have to control where the circles face according to the rest of the cut piece.
The cutouts in the middle of the pieces that are curves do not need such corners obviously.
The picture is an example drawn
I hope this isn't too specific and long. in general though automating fabrication, and controling pracitcal math and orientation problems like this is itnersting to me!
THANKS…
thing that MicroStation does (or doesn't). The eternal debate between us is that they focus to the so called BIM aspect of things (and obviously on interoperability matters - that said IFC2*4 is" implemented" in certain Bentley verticals like BA and others) whilst I'm after assembly/component puzzles (and on that matter ... MS ...hmm... to put it politely is not exactly CATIA and/or NX, he he).
On the other hand this paranoid obsession with Level/Layer driven CAD (I hate it) defines a red thick line between CAD and MCAD - because the most intelligent importer can't emulate the way that Siemens NX/CATIA classifies objects - and without control power means nothing.
On the other hand Microstation V9 (...soon) has interesting scripting capabilities (think Modo rather Generative Components) ... meaning that Grasshopper could work there in a rather nice way. I think that I must talk for that to Ray (he recently ditched the ancient legacy MS render engine in favor for the Luxology/Nexus engine). Ray still is negative to buy Act3D mind (hope that you know the mother of visual scripting - the Quest3D VR thing).
On the other hand - within the broad AEC aspect - things these days are different (especially in fast developing countries the likes of UAE, Saudi Arabia, certain ex USSR "democracies" etc etc). Studies are outsourced even at Preliminary Design stage to various sub-contractors (they undertake the Study completion per discipline as well). This means that N separate groups doing M aspects of the whole ... meaning entropy^(N*M) - that's chaos in plain English.
With this in mind I'm quite (a lot) skeptical about the practical meaning of the whole exchange thing in AEC - at least with regard the countries mentioned (not to mention that several portions of a modern AEC thing are made via MCAD apps - chaos^chaos.
I'll back with more focused issues on that matter.
But the big question is: Grasshopper of Generative Components? Well...let's talk serious SS bikes instead: think a Ducati 1198 and a BMW S1000RR (I have them both): which is "best"? The thing is that not always the best bunny is the fasted bunny and not always the fasted bunny is the best bunny.
Cheers,
Peter
…
ty to work in a new and exciting space, where design, art, technology and fashion meet.
If you guys are looking for a full- or part-time job, or know an expert who is - we're happy to with meet him/her. We're located in the Lower East Side, New York.
What the person will be doing:
- Provide technical vision for product and infrastructure features
- Work with Marketing/Product Management to enhance the user experience
- Develop (with our team) our e-commerce customization platform
- Manage our real time 3D modeling platform
- Mentor 3D modelers and developers, define and document development methods, and share best practices
- Review and recommend improvements to product architecture
What we require:
- BA/BS/ BARCH degree OR CS/EE/Engineering degree preferred
- EXTENSIVE 3d modeling, rhino and grasshopper experience
- Experience building online computer games
- Experience creating natural and fractal patterns and forms in 3d
- UV Texture Mapping bit mapping (texture mapping)
- Experience managing a development team in projects with tight SCHEDULES
- Architecture, programing, scripting, Media or Fashion industry experience preferred
- Experience implementing web interfaces using XHTML, CSS, Javascript, and AJAX
- Experience in recommendation engines and algorithms
- Interest in working in an early stage fast-paced environment…
next level.
This Parametric Design course will provide the participants with the necessary knowledge and ability to use Grasshopper, a free visual programming plugin in Rhinoceros; you will be guided through a series of hands-on exercises that highlight NURBS modeling and its concepts. We will introduce Grasshopper as a graphical algorithm editor tightly integrated with Rhino’s 3D modeling tools. You will also learn how Rhino is used to render models for visualization, translate 3D models for prototyping, and export 3D models into 2D CAD or graphics programs.
English is the course main language.
Location: Düsseldorf city center
Registration and buying Tickets
www.digitalparametrics.eventbrite.de
Course Calendar:
4 Days 6 hours each
Total duration 24h
2 weekends
Date:
Sat. 17 - Sun. 18 June
Sat. 24 - Sun. 25 June
10:00 - 17:00
Getting Started in Rhino. 2 days (17 - 18 June)
Getting Started in Grasshopper. 2 days (24 - 25 June)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Participants will be given a certificate of participation at the end of the course.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Course fees:
Professionals: 600€ (excl. MwSt.) Students: 500€ (excl. MwSt.) Students need to provide: Copy of current student ID or proof of student enrollment at University/School.
Group discounts:
Group of 3 professionals: 3x500 = 1500€ (excl. MwSt.)
Group of 3 Students: 3x400 = 1200€ (excl. MwSt.)
Participants are kindly asked to bring their own laptops and have pre-installed Rhino + Grasshopper.
Useful Resources:
Rhinoceros Installation (90 days full version trial available): http://www.rhino3d.com/download
Rhinoceros for Mac (includes Grasshopper) http://www.rhino3d.com/download/rhino-for-mac/5/wip
Grasshopper Free Installation: http://www.grasshopper3d.com/page/download-1
Grasshopper Free Plugins: http://www.food4rhino.com/app/lunchbox http://www.giuliopiacentino.com/weaverbird
Main Tutor:
Rihan
M.A. Dipl.Ing. Architect
Architect at RKW Architektur + Düsseldorf
For any questions about the course, please email: info@immersive-studio.com…
ll geometry.
The difference with programs like Inventor is that they are made for production, regardless of the fabrication method. I won't go into detail about that, and instead focus on the modeling process.
In this little model, the starting point actually is a bit obvious, the foundation.
The only contents in the 3dm file are 27 lines. These indicate the location of each footing, and the direction of the tilt of each column. Everything else is defined in GH with the use of numbers as input parameters.
Needless to say, instead of those lines you could obviously generate lines and control the number of columns and panels, hence establish their layout, with any algorithmic or non-algorithmic criteria you please. That marks a major difference between GH and Inventor.
You can generate geometry with Inventor via scripting/customization (beyond iLogic), with transient graphics for visual feedback similar to GH's red-default previews. However Inventor's modeling functions are not set to input and output data trees. I won't go into detail on that, but suffice to say that the data tree associativity of GH was for me the first major difference I noticed. I've used other apps with node diagram interfaces like digital fusion for non-linear video editing since the late 90's, so the canvas did not call my attention when I first started using GH.
Anyways, here's a screen capture of the foundational lines:
In the first group of components, the centerlines of the rear columns are modeled:
And the locations in elevation for connection points are set. Those elevations were just numbers I copied from Excel, but you can obviously control that any way you please. I was just trying to model this quickly.
The same was done for the rear columns:
The above, believe it or not, took me the first 5 hours to get.
Here's a screen capture of what the model and definition looked like after 4 hours, not much:
If you're interested, next post I can get into the sketching part you mentioned, which is a bit cumbersome with GH, but not really.
I wouldn't say that using GH to do this little model was cumbersome, it just needed some thinking at the beginning. You do similar initial thinking when working with a feature-based modeler.…
Added by Santiago Diaz at 12:44am on February 24, 2011