Spatial Deform -- correct usage/behavior?

Hi... I haven't used Spatial Deform much... but I was hoping that it would perform like the cageedit command in Rhino. Unfortunately it seems to have quite a different behavior, with highly localized effects near points and a quick falloff, resulting in this pillsbury doughboy effect I am seeing (see image 1).

I used an alternate method of point fields on surface, translate, and surface from point field to get the effect I want (see image 2). This method also calculates much faster, according to the Profiler. But I would love to be able to use the spatial deform component on more complex topological objects...

Am I missing the point of Spatial Deform? Anyone using this component successfully?

Thanks,
Marc

Attachments:

spatialDeform.jpg, 421 KB
deformSurfaces.jpg, 420 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Evan C on February 3, 2010 at 3:27am

I'm working on a similar problem, trying to replicate CageEdit in GH. I'm having more luck with SurfaceMorph, but its very difficult to control the shape of things in the W dimension.see attached.

Attachments:

srfmorphtest.jpg, 167 KB

Permalink Reply by P. Casey Mahon on February 4, 2010 at 8:36am

Marc,

A few months ago I saw David give a presentation on the "new features" (old by now) in grasshopper and what he showed when demoing the spatial deformation component was something similar to D'arcy Thompson's deformation diagrams:

hope that helps

- case

Permalink Reply by Marc Syp on February 4, 2010 at 9:27am

It helps to know that David had this kind of deformation in mind, but it doesn't help in the sense that I have not gotten it to work correctly yet. I have tried with a full grid of points, as well, instead of just boundary points, no luck... anyway, if anyone can post a proper usage, I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
Marc

Permalink Reply by taz on February 5, 2010 at 3:47pm

This was David's quick verbal description. I just found it again...

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/my-ideas-for-future-featu...

Permalink Reply by taz on February 7, 2010 at 1:18pm

Marc,

I think I'm running up against the same issue you were.

I was thinking I could get [Spatial Deform] to work as a custom morph box, but it doesn't seem to operate in the same fashion when it translates geometry. Basically it seems like [Spatial Deform] only produces 2D transformations (and the pillowing effect).

The image may not be the clearest and my definition is a mess, but the basic setup I was playing with was a hexagonal lattice bounding volume.

The base geometry is deformed, but the orientation doesn't relate to the target space.

Any thoughts or progress?

Attachments: