More Kangaroo 2

Note: this exercise requires the Mesh Flip and Mesh Explode components from the MeshEdit plugin for Grasshopper:
  • Get the plugin from here.
  • Extract the files and go into the 170625 folder.
  • Right click on the file Meshedit2000.gha and select Properties. If you see a checkbox at the bottom of the dialog window that says "Unblock", click that box. Do the same for the file Plankton.gha. If you don't see this checkbox then you can skip this step.
  • Copy the entire 170625 folder into your Grasshhopper Library folder, which you can access from Grasshopper by selecting File > Special Folders > Components Folder.
  • Finally, exit Rhino and run it again. To verify that the plugin was installed successfully, bring up a search box in Grasshopper and type "MeshFlip" (not "FlipMesh"). If Mesh Flip inserts a Flip component, the plugin is working.

    Coloring a Mesh in Strips

  1. If you didn't save the results of the previous lecture, load the pre-made file organic-pipes.3dm into Rhino.
  2. In Grasshopper, create a Mesh parameter and set it to the organic pipes mesh.
  3. Create a Sets > List > Dispatch component and feed the Mesh parameter into it.
  4. Create a Toggle component and feed it into the Dispatch's P input.
  5. Connect the A output of Dispatch to a Move component.
  6. Right click on the Move component's Transform input and do Set One Vector. Set a vector to move the mesh copy out of the way of the Rhino object.
  7. Connect the B output of Dispatch to a Mesh Flip component, and run its output as an additional input into the G parameter of the Move.
  8. Create a Kangaroo 2 > Mesh > Stripper component and run the output of the Move into it.
  9. Run the output of Mesh Stripper into a Dispatch component.
  10. Create two Mesh > Primitive > Mesh Colours components and run the A and B outputs of Dispatch into them.
  11. Create a Params > Input > Colour Swatch component for each Mesh Colours component and set one to blue and the other to white.
  12. Feed the outputs of the two Mesh Colours components into the M+ input of Weaverbird > Extract > Weaverbird's Mesh Join and Weld. Leave the W input as False.
  13. Flip the toggle and observe the results.
  14. Bake the result and look at it in Render mode.

    Checkerboard Coloring

  15. Create a similar program as above, but run the moved mesh through a Mesh > Analysis > Mesh Explode component and feed the faces into the Dispatch component.
  16. Create a Kangaroo 2 > Mesh > Checkerboard component, feed the moved mesh into it, and feed its output into the P input of Dispatch.
  17. Bake the result and look at it in Render mode.

    Warp and Weft Pipe Coloring

  18. Create a program similar to the first one.
  19. Run the moved mesh into a Kangaroo 2 > Mesh > Warp/Weft component.
  20. Feed the A output of Warp/Weft into a Curve parameter.
  21. Feed the Curve component into a Pipe component and set the pipe radius to 0.05.
  22. Flatten the output of the Pipe component and feed it into a Mesh parameter.
  23. Run the moved mesh into one Mesh Colours component and the meshed pipes into the other Mesh Colours component.
  24. Optional: set the E parameter of the Pipe component to cap the pipes. This makes things much slower.
  25. Bake the result and examine it in Render view.

    Make Your Own Organic Shape

  26. Load the organic-shrink.gh file into Grasshopper.
  27. In Rhino, go to Solid > Box > Corner-to-corner and draw two boxes that overlap diagonally, with one taller than the other.
  28. In Grasshopper, make a Brep parameter, do "set multiple breps", and select the two boxes.
  29. Feed the Brep parameter into an Intersect > Shape > Solid Union component.
  30. Bake the output of Solid Union into Rhino and move the result off to the side.
  31. To create some naked vertices, delete the top and bottom faces of the two-box structure by doing control-shift-click to select a face and then hitting Delete.
  32. In Grasshopper, make a Geometry parameter and set it equal to the mutilated box object.
  33. Feed the Geometry parameter into a Mesh &Triangulation > Quad Remesh component. Note that there are two components with this name; choose the orange one, not the candystriped one.
  34. Feed the output of Quad Remesh into the Mesh component at the start of the organic-shrink program.
  35. Bake the output of the program and observe it in Shaded or Render mode.

  36. Now make your own complex shape, deform it as we did above, and then feed it through the organic-shrink process.
  37. Hand in your Grasshopper and Rhino files as the "organic" assignment.
Dave Touretzky