nullthing

Something I have been messing around with for a while in the computer, but a couple of weeks ago I was able to mock it up. The idea is a screen wall that would have a flexible “louver.” The basic unit is a clip. As the clip rotates the louver rotates with it. The video above shows the clip and how the louver would be controlled by multiple clips.

The openness/rotation of the louvers is controlled topographically by a surface. You can see how this works in the video above. The louvers could be controlled by the displacement of an image or by simply deforming the surface.

The model includes all of the tooling needed to produce the ribs+clips with a laser cutter.  In that sense the unit in Maya is not just representational, but contains all of the lines and tolerances need for production. We are proposing this for an office renovation that we are currently working on in the studio. The tooling will of course change and the structure will become a composite of CNC cut ribs/columns and laser cut clips. We hope it happens, it will be exciting to produce a completely tooled/labeled model. It would be great to not have to make any drawings. You can check out the model that was used for laser cutting below.

Source: screen.mb

More Images

Here is something I am working on in flash to create a graphic. It uses a simple recursive branching structure to create random clusters of lines.

Unfortunately still can’t export actionscript generated images as vectors. We needed the image in vectors so I wrote the script in MEL. I think I will use this as chance to jump start processing here (I know you can export vector frames).  Also think it would be interesting for everyone to compare the three methods for creating the same thing.

Download Source:

Flash: branch.fla

MEL: branch.mel + stem.mb

I have been messing around off and on trying to create a 3d cellular automata  model in Maya using expressions. It is fairly difficult to create an agent based or object-oriented system using expressions because once you drive an attribute from within an expression it cannot receive any other inputs (unless I am missing something or there is a utility node that allows this). So it was a little harder than doing something like this in Flash. The only delta from the outside is time, which is controlled by the timeline. I also had a problem with the names of the cells and the child check. The end result only gives birth to a cell in every other space. This creates a sort of 3d checkerboard effect. I tried to sort this out, but gave up for now. I don’t think it looks, bad its just that you have all of the useless cells. You can download the cell file below and an updated duplicate script that allows you to create a 3d grid of the cell. Make sure you set all of the cells Timer  attribute to -4 and then go to frame 1 on the timeslider. Choose a cell and set Timer to 0 (this will be the original) and playback the animation. It works best with over 6 cells in each direction, but it can get heavy with over 20.

Download source: cell.mb + duplicate3d.mel

The frame above is from a video we are producing in the studio. We had a problem with extruding a profile along Hair curves. We wanted the geometry to be pointed so we extruded a profile with the scale parameter set to 0. It seems to also scale the transform nodes to 0… so everything gets a little wacky when things are animated . This script creates a duplicate of the selected profile and then places it at the base of the curve for extrusion. Its a little more robust than a loop that extrudes a profile along a curve and it allows you to input the scale at the end of the extrusion, but it does create a profile for every curve so it is a good idea to group your original profile so they are easy to select in the final hour after 4 coffees when you decide they need to be 98.6% smaller.

Source: extrudeScale.mel

Another general, but useful set of scripts…. especially when you need to move around or scale 100’s of objects. RanPos.mel takes a list of selected objects and gives them a random position based on a user entered range.  RanSize.mel… well… does the same thing but gives each object a random size.

Source:RanPos.mel + RanSize.mel

Uploading a couple of simple utility scripts that I have written to help out with some generic tasks at the studio. Most of them are pretty simple, but maybe useful. They are also a good source to start learning a little MEL since they are small and pretty straight forward.

This script randomizes the position of CVs on a polygonal object based on a user entered range for the position delta.

Source:randomize.mel

I almost forgot about the metaball plug-in in for Maya (was poking around the other day and re-found it… it was like birthday + xmas). You can download it here@ highend3d. It’s pretty fun to mess around with and the latest version works with Maya 8.5 . I remember messing around with this back @ Columbia. The polygon surface tessellates in real time… its very nice. Definitely entertaining! Don’t know if its good for making buildings, but I think we will find a use for it in the studio.

As promised here is a sphere packing procedure in MEL. It uses the same logic as the previous 2D post in flash.  I used Subsurface Scattering for the image… nice effect, but doesn’t really look like jadeballs or skinballs… i’ll have to work on that

Source: SpherePack.mel

The beginning of the day….

By the end of the day!

Here is a MEL script for generating shaders with random color for a list of selected objects. I have a bunch of these small scripts to help with silly things around the studio. I wasn’t going to post them, but you should always give the little guy a chance… sometimes they’re the most helpful. I’ll post more of these in the future.

Source: RanColor.mel

More Freedom Scripts. Another script we are using in the studio for a magazine spread. This one is a little more interesting. It uses a recursive growth algorithm. The placement of the units are random points on a sphere the size of its parent. I would keep the steps and growth factor low until you mess around with it a bit, it can get a little out of hand. Oh, and these images are just for fun not for the magazine… that’s a surprise.

Source: RanCluster.mel