SPM Vector Components: Tutorials and Examples

Find them here!

SPM Vector Components: Major New Release!

In this release we focused on creating a cohesive set of components that provide the flexibility to not only accurately find streamlines of given data sets and but also to intuitively manipulate and create new families of streamlines. Now, although we’re really excited about the many features included in this release, they do add to the overall complexity. We’ve tried to keep the workflow as simple and straightforward as possible, but we definitely need your input on what you find useful/annoying/confusing….
But to highlight a few of the major developments:

• The slightly monstrous Settings component for the Static Integrator can handle a very large variety of situations with a bit of tweaking.
• The Dynamic Integrator is now a full blown particle simulator – emitters, respawning, lifespan, etc. We’ve even managed to get 100000 particles on screen without crashing….
• Both the Dynamic and Static Integrators work on exactly the same engine under the hood, and can be interchanged with minimal effort.
• A Dynamics library has been started. This allows certain predetermined to be plugged directly into both Integrators (like a gravity sinks, spiral singularities, etc…). We hope to hear your suggestions for expanding this library
• The two Interpolation components can be used for anything from adding sample density to simulations to keyframing parameter settings
• A very preliminary reference document will be available soon with some tutorials and examples – refining this document will be an ongoing effort, so bear with us.

And there’s lot more…

Also, should anyone be interested in the math or code behind these components, or in fact any of the other services that the SPM provides (structural engineering, geometry reviews, custom plugin development, 3d modelling) just let us know. I’d be happy to set something up.

Enjoy!

Multi-dimensional Interpolation

I have to admit – I’m fairly excited about this component. The basic idea is that if you can attach a value to a sample point, then interpolation can give you an expected value at a test point somewhere between the sample points. Our component simply generalizes this to arbitrary dimensions – allowing for morphing, keyframing, basically any kind of interpolation you can think of.

I’ll try to work up some crazier examples but this video should give a good idea of the basics…

Multi Dim. Interpolation will be included in the May 20th release of the SPM Vector Components.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/23699024 w=400 &h=295]

Principal Curvature Orbits

Here’s a quick preview of the May 20th release of the SPM Vector Components Grasshopper plug-in. These screenshots show the Orbit Detection parameters working with the new Line Continuity and Constrain to Surface modes. These new modes let the integrator pass over singular points and avoid awkward stops and kinks at the expense of directionality. Therefore it works very well with principal curvature fields, but maybe not so much with principal stress fields (where it would interchange the pure compression direction with pure tension….structurally not always a good idea).