Updated Voronoi Attractor

It’s been a really long time since my previous post here, but I guess I’ve been busy elsewhere. However, some people have asked me about the simple voronoi attractor definition I put up here a while ago so here is an updated version. It’s based on a scrambled hex grid which is distorted by an attractor and fed into a voronoi component. Enjoy.






// download definition file: new-voronoi-attractor.ghx

Box Tree

A simple play with boxes and the OcTree component which creates boxes around a set of input points. This component creates each box around a specified number of input points, thus resulting in a denser field of smaller boxes where the points have a tighter relationship. To generate the points, I used Rajaa Issa’s Fractal Plant vb-script component. The boxes are then assigned different colours depending on their size and baked on separate layers using Giulio Piacentino’s Bake Attributes C# component.



// download definition file: pxl-tree.ghx

Employed

Without making any excuses, one reason why I haven’t posted the last month is that I’ve started working for Jonas Lindvall. While this employment surely won’t stop me from posting once in a while, I’ll guess they’ll be less frequent. So please be patient.

Bitmap Terrain

A quick way to create terrain is to use a heighfield map. With the new bitmap component it’s now very easy to do in grasshopper. Divide the starting surface into points which are fed into the bitmap component. Move these points along the z-axis according to a suitable channel value (brightness, or another colour depending on your image) and then rebuild the surface again. Done



// download definition file: bitmap-heightfield.ghx

Bitmap Colour

Another use for the bitmap component is to sample colour from an image and then translate onto geometry. Simply select colour in the component preferences and connect it to the shader component which creates a material. This can then be baked for rendering using Giulio Piacentino’s Bake Attributes plugin.

Bitmap Pattern

Another new feature of the latest versions of Grasshopper is the bitmap component. It’s a component which opens up a lot of new possibilities and it’s really easy to use. You simply load an image, input some points and out comes a value between 0 and 1 responding to the hue, brightness or transparency etc., on that point in the image. You may need a bit of tweaking to get the desired result but it works great. It’s harder to explain how it works than to do it yourself, if you look at the definition it should be very clear.



// download definition file: bitmap-pixel-loft.ghx

Voronoi Attractor

In the latest release of Grasshopper, David Rutten has incorporated many of his Pointset Reconstrution tools for Rhino. There are, for example, components for voronoi, delaunay, quadtree and convexhull funtions. To have them right there in grasshopper lets you skip the step of calling them from rhino or a script. Great!

To try these new components out, I’ve put together a quick voronoi definition which inputs a surface and an attractor point which influences the sizes of the voronoi cells. The closer to the point, the smaller and tighter the cells.



// download definition file: voronoi-attractor.ghx