Emitters and Sprites

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/28353918 w=720 &h=480]

Although using the vector display with a gradient significantly decreases the performance of GH (video has been sped up 1.5x), it looks great!

I only wish I could customize the sprites, or at least make mesh vertices transparent….

SPM Vector Components: Tutorials and Examples

Find them here!

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]

SPM Vector Components: Update

So, I realize that this is the third release of the SPM plugin in 7 days, but since we won’t be able to work on the project for a week or two, we thought it best just to get it out there…

In this release:

• Added a boundary Brep option in the settings component. Very useful for clipping the integral  lines
• Added two orbit detection parameters: distance and angle. If not zero, then these determine how closely the position and direction of a given step in the integration must match the initial point before the orbit snaps to being closed. Very useful for maintaining stable simulations.
• Added a utility that acts on the output of either the dynamic or static integrator. If orbit detection is turned on, then you’ll want to sort the lists of integrated points in to lists of closed and open curves….this utility does exactly that. You may need to remove null trees from the list.

And that’s it for now…I’ll work on getting some examples of these new functions in the near future. Download it here…

SPM Vector Components: New Release!

New features:

• Added a “Settings” Component which allows you to tweak the integration component. Most of what we implemented are checks that stop the integral line (winding number still to come…), and the default values work in most cases
• Added an “Interpolation” factor in the “Settings” Component which computes an expected vector between the sample points. This allows you to get integral curves on even a very coarse sampling space – however, you lose accuracy. Use with caution!
• Dynamic Simulation Compute can now simulate multiple flows at once
• Under the hood, the whole project has been restructured (and rewritten!) to accomodate further development…

Download it here…, or join the discussion.

Enjoy!

New SPM Grasshopper component: Vector Field Integration

Here’s our take at a GH component that finds the integral lines of 2d or 3d vector fields.

The way it works is very simple: you give it a list of sample points and associated vectors (1 vector for each sample point) and a start point, and it flows that start point along the vector field up to a specified iteration limit and step size. The advantage to having a generalized component like this is that along with things like principal curvature lines, it can also compute paths guided by isovists and visibility algorithms.

Download it here. Written by Chris Walsh and Daniel Hambleton.