r graphics get saved as 24x24 pixel images before they are put into the grasshopper application, which means the icons look like crap when you zoom in. This is the aforementioned problem that needs to be addressed in GH2. There have historically been two approaches to this issue:
Provide pixel images with several sizes.
Render vector graphics directly.
Option 1 is common for apps that do not have variable levels of zoom, such as Windows Explorer. When explorer shows file icons it either shows them in 16x16, 32x32, 48x48, 96x96, or these days, various HUGE sizes. As a result *.ico files allow you put in different images for all these target sizes. Since Grasshopper has variable zoom levels, this is not an ideal solution. Also, it requires a lot more work per icon.
Option 2 is becoming more and more popular as increased graphics speed now allows for the real-time rendering of vector graphics. Yet, you still need a renderer that knows how to draw vector geometry crisply at low sizes. All vector renderers I know just interpolate the geometry linearly and if a line happens to end up 'between pixels' it's just fuzzy.
I don't have hard and fast rules for the icons, but I try to adhere to at least these:
Keep a border of 2 pixels free around the icon content. So basically only use the inner 20x20 pixels rather than the 24x24 you're allowed. This is needed because the drop shadow needs to go there.
Only draw silhouette edges around shapes, not inner creases. Typically a 1-pixel line will do. I prefer to use a dark version of the fill colour rather than black for edges.
Loose curves can be drawn in 1 or 2 pixel thicknesses, depending on how important the curve is.
Try to avoid text in your icons (not always possible).
Stick to 1 colour family per icon, preferably per icon family. You can add highlights with another colour if you must, but too many hues make an icon hard to read (for the example the [Voronoi] icon, it has red, green and blue and it's a bit of a mess, on the other hand [Colour Wheel] has the full spectrum and seems to work quite well...).
Very roughly speaking, if there's both black and red geometry in an icon, it means the red is component input and the black is component output.
Drop shadows are pixel effects, applied to the 24x24 image. They have a blurring radius of 2 pixels, a horizontal offset of 1 pixel to the right, a vertical offset of 1 pixel to the bottom and they are 65% black.
When you use high contrast shapes (for example black edges on a light background) the anti-aliasing provided by vector renderers such as Xara or Illustrator won't be enough to make it look smooth. I'd recommend avoiding high contrast if at all possible, but if not possible then draw a 1-pixel line around the dark bits in 95% transparent black. This effectively extends the anti-aliasing range from 1.5 to 2.5 pixels and it helps make things looks smoother.
--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com…
ect + Geco
TUTORS:
Arturo Tedeschi (Authorized Rhino Trainer) + Maurizio Arturo Degni
Il workshop avanzato ECOLOGIC PATTERNS affronta l’impiego di strategie parametriche all’interno del processo progettuale, approfondendo l’utilizzo di Grasshopper in sinergia con plug-in, software di analisi ambientale e simulazione fisica. Obiettivo fondamentale è la generazione della forma come risultato di tecniche di form-finding e di input ambientali (solari, termici e acustici). Verranno acquisiti nuovi strumenti operativi e di simulazione al fine di costruire modelli parametrici ottimizzati in grado di adattarsi a diverse condizioni di contesto.
MORE INFO…
ive collaborative environment.
TYPE : Course module and Workshop
The event is open for anybody interested from all the fields of design, including: architecture, interior design, furniture design, product design, fashion design, scenography, and engineering.
1. COURSE MODULE (20-23 April 2014) - optional
+ type: 3 days intensive course regarding basic knowledge in parametric design (LEVEL 1)
+ software: Rhinoceros & Grasshopper
+ plugins: Kangaroo, Weaver Bird, Lunch box, Ghowl, Geco
+ achievements:
- acquainting to the components & the concept of Generative Design
- understanding the strategies in Algorithmic Design
- how to easily insert simple mathematical equation into the project to gain more control
- how to utilize proper plugins with respect to their nature of the project
- interacting with different analysis platforms such as Ecotect & remote controller
- solving several exercises with different scales( 2D- 3D ) during each phase of the workshop
2. WORKSHOP (23-27 April 2014)
A 5 day Design-Based Research Workshop exploring new techniques in Digital Architecture/Fabrication, with a specific focus on the use of generative systems and parametric modeling as tools for creative expression.
Our ultimate goal is to increasing the efficiency of utilizing digital tools in parallel with geometric performance of the primitive design agent.
+ + CONCEPT
Fashion and Architecture are both based on basic life necessities – clothing and shelter.
However, they are also forms of self-expression – for both creators and consumers.
Both fashion and architecture affect our emotional being in many ways.
The agenda of this workshop is to investigate on the overlap between these two areas of design, art & fashion.
Fashion and architecture express ideas of personal, social and cultural identity, reflecting the concerns of the user and the ambition of the age. Their relationship is a symbiotic one and throughout history, clothing and buildings have echoed each other in form and appearance. This only seems natural as they not only share the primary function of providing shelter and protection for the body, but also because they both create space and volume out of flat, two-dimensional materials.
While they have much in common, they are also intrinsically different – address the human scale, but the proportions, sizes and shapes differ enormously.
+ + + OBJECTIVES
So far, Architects have been using techniques such as folding, bending etc. to create space, structural roofs or different other structural shapes.
The agenda of this workshop goes further with the investigation of algorithmic thinking through generative tools Integrated in design.
The challenge is creating a bridge that connects these two areas of design, architecture and fashion that perform at two opposite scales.
+ + + + TECHNICAL BRIEF
In the early stages physical models and low-tech strategies will be used, allowing the participants to gain a greater understanding of materials, fabrication and assembly methods as well as simple, yet pragmatic structural solutions.
Later in the workshop these strategies will be digitalized and elaborated using software visualizing tools such as Rhinoceros and the algorithmic plug-in Grasshopper.…
(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…
well, very similar input data must result in wildly different hashes. For example, imagine we have an algorithm which computes hashes of text, and the hashes it computes are all numbers between 0 and 999. We then apply this algorithm to a piece of text:
"When Spring comes back with rustling shade" = 385
So far so good. Now imagine we change the text slightly, for example by removing a single "l":
"When Spring comes back with rusting shade" = 973
Minor change -> very different hash. There are of course way more unique texts than there are numbers between 0 and 999. This must therefore mean that a lot of text will result in the same hash. For example "When Spring brings back blue days and fair." may also result in a hash of 385. Because of the pigeonhole principle, there is nothing to be done about this.
Now for the tricky bit. Hashes are often used to validate executable code. Say your friend James at MI6 sends you a small program that will allow you to eavesdrop on Angela Merkel, and -over the phone- he tells you the hashcode for that application. You can then hash the application yourself, verify that it indeed results in the same hashcode and then you know you can trust the executable.
But now Jack from the FBI intercepts the email and adds a few sneaky lines of code to the original application allowing him to determine from your internet search history with up to 95% accuracy whether you like extra cheese on your pizza. The application has now been tampered with, it can no longer be trusted and you should be able to figure this out as it will no longer result in the same hash code.
But wait! Some hashing algorithms are more secure than others. MD5 is now officially considered to be 'hacked' and it is no longer recommended for doing naughty spying. Specifically, Jack will be able to inject his own code in such a way that it does not result in a different hash. Instead, the SHA family of hashers are to be used, as it is not yet known how to trick these hashers.
This is where the problem comes in, because apparently the US government has forcefully disabled the use of MD5 for all purposes. This is a shame because I use it to quickly compare bitmap icons for identicalness so I only have to store an icon in memory once. There is no security hole due to this, because I'm not hashing secure data. MD5 is somewhat faster than SHA, and since I have to hash several hundred icons on Grasshopper start, I opted for the faster one.
(Very) long story short; you're hosed. Grasshopper uses MD5; USgov does not like; Grasshopper does not run on USgov computers.
I'll do some testing to see if I can switch to SHA and then we can see whether or not that solves the problem. This however will take a while as I'm going on a business trip next week and have yet to prepare my presentations.
--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com…
Added by David Rutten at 12:06pm on March 31, 2014
ed file and code below:
Color ColorAt(Mesh mesh, int faceIndex, double t0, double t1, double t2, double t3) { // int rc = -1; var color = Rhino.Display.Color4f.Black;
if( mesh.VertexColors.Count != 0) { // test to see if face exists if( faceIndex >= 0 && faceIndex < mesh.Faces.Count ) { /// Barycentric quad coordinates for the point on the mesh /// face mesh.Faces[FaceIndex].
/// If the face is a triangle /// disregard T[3] (it should be set to 0.0).
/// If the face is /// a quad and is split between vertexes 0 and 2, then T[3] /// will be 0.0 when point is on the triangle defined by vi[0], /// vi[1], vi[2]
/// T[1] will be 0.0 when point is on the /// triangle defined by vi[0], vi[2], vi[3].
/// If the face is a /// quad and is split between vertexes 1 and 3, then T[2] will /// be -1 when point is on the triangle defined by vi[0], /// vi[1], vi[3]
/// and m_t[0] will be -1 when point is on the /// triangle defined by vi[1], vi[2], vi[3].
MeshFace face = mesh.Faces[faceIndex];
// Collect data for barycentric evaluation. Color p0, p1, p2;
if(face.IsTriangle) { p0 = mesh.VertexColors[face.A]; p1 = mesh.VertexColors[face.B]; p2 = mesh.VertexColors[face.C]; } else { if( t3 == 0 ) { // point is on subtriangle {0,1,2} p0 = mesh.VertexColors[face.A]; p1 = mesh.VertexColors[face.B]; p2 = mesh.VertexColors[face.C]; } else if( t1 == 0 ) { // point is on subtriangle {0,2,3} p0 = mesh.VertexColors[face.A]; p1 = mesh.VertexColors[face.C]; p2 = mesh.VertexColors[face.D]; //t0 = t0; t1 = t2; t2 = t3; } else if( t2 == -1 ) { // point is on subtriangle {0,1,3} p0 = mesh.VertexColors[face.A]; p1 = mesh.VertexColors[face.B]; p2 = mesh.VertexColors[face.D]; //t0 = t0; //t1 = t1; t2 = t3; } else { // point must be on remaining subtriangle {1,2,3} p0 = mesh.VertexColors[face.B]; p1 = mesh.VertexColors[face.C]; p2 = mesh.VertexColors[face.D]; t0 = t1; t1 = t2; t2 = t3; } }
/** double r = t0 * p0.FractionRed() + t1 * p1.FractionRed() + t2 * p2.FractionRed(); double g = t0 * p0.FractionGreen() + t1 * p1.FractionGreen() + t2 * p2.FractionGreen(); double b = t0 * p0.FractionBlue() + t1 * p1.FractionBlue() + t2 * p2.FractionBlue();
ON_Color color; color.SetFractionalRGB(r, g, b);
unsigned int abgr = (unsigned int)color; rc = (int) ABGR_to_ARGB(abgr); **/ var c0 = new Rhino.Display.Color4f(p0); var c1 = new Rhino.Display.Color4f(p1); var c2 = new Rhino.Display.Color4f(p2); float s0 = (float) t0; float s1 = (float) t1; float s2 = (float) t2;
float R = s0 * c0.R + s1 * c1.R + s2 * c2.R; float G = s0 * c0.G + s1 * c1.G + s2 * c2.G; float B = s0 * c0.B + s1 * c1.B + s2 * c2.B; color = new Rhino.Display.Color4f(R, G, B, 1); } } return color.AsSystemColor(); }
…
Introduction to Grasshopper Videos by David Rutten.
Wondering how to get started with Grasshopper? Look no further. Spend an some time with the creator of Grasshopper, David Rutten, to learn the