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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.

Don’t have too much to say about this… check out the *.swf in the extended post and the file below.

Source:exploding_beauty.fla

Check out the *.swf>>>

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

I have been meaning to do it for a while, and I have finally gotten around to messing with some circle-packing methods. We are working on a site in the studio that is evolving into a circular navigation system and we might need some of these behaviors. This method is based on steps I found on Andrew Kudless’s site MATSYS. I am going to try write this in MEL (2d&3d) in the next couple of days and I’ll post that as well. I think we may need something with interaction between multiple circles. Like this: http://www.cricketschirping.com/processing/CirclePacking1/

I am going to try and figure that out next…

Source: cpack1.fla

Check out the *.swf >>>

The beauty of the real world is that things have thickness. I don’t fall out of the studio onto 27th street because the walls and glass have thickness.

We are doing some experiments in the studio that require snap fit joints so we had a long discussion about tolerance the other day. It seems they don’t teach that in school. I know its not a button in Maya, but I would say its fairly important, maybe even more than smoothing polygons. I have learned my lessons about tolerance with grinders, power sanders, and sometimes a dremel. I know it is sort of an imaginary thing and you can’t see it Maya, Rhino, 3DS, 2nd Life, etc…. but its there and it can strike as soon as you make something real. We have made a lot of prototypes and we have a lot of parts that are broken or too loose, but we only have a few that have that notorious “exact fit.” From now on we will remember to invite tolerance to all of our building parties in the real world (well… until we forget again).