A new season of awesome events of design & digital culture took  place during this months, always amazing to see how artists and designers push the boundaries of  technology to create new stuff  as an example of this we have the opening titles sequences  of the events  which are always amazing.

OFF 2010 , Paris Opening Titles

This year OFFF´s Opening Titles were in charge of  The Mill NY ,who  took the opportunity to debut their new  integrated design and animation team. The languid journey they take us on through the forty-five titles for this years OFFF conference and also displays the immense animation potential of   this new division of the Mill.

About the piece

Jeff Stevens(Director): The original, over arching concept was strength vs beauty and the affinity that each has for the other. At the same time, I wanted to create something that was abstract yet ‘seemingly’ natural. So, creating an environment that was underwater mixed with air began to take shape. Texture was important to me, so when Kim began illustrating, the contours and rawness of materials started to create a landscape and pattern for all of our characters. The best part was that nothing needed to be real. We could have suggested more reality but I think the blend of species, environment, and biomechanics perfectly summed up that affinity I was looking for.

OFFF Paris 2010 Titles from OFFF on Vimeo.

MAD MXX , Madrid Opening Titles

MAD MXX an event that gathers the  best designers and creative minds,to share their ideas with more than 2000 people.This years edition opening titles were commissioned to Physalia Studio which made use of  a 3d scaning scanning technology for creating the   visual effects of the oppening sequence, which were popularized in Radiohead’s House of Cards video and open source code.

Don´t forget to watch the making of  video at the bottom , It´s always nice to watch the creative process of this kind of works which helps a lot to understand how they were created. If you are interested in creating a similar project I will strongly suggest you to visit Create Digital Motion blog you´ll find more information and resources to make your own 3d scanning scenes.

MAD MMX – Opening Title Sequence from Physalia Studio on Vimeo.

MAD MMX – Opening Title Sequence. Making Of from Physalia Studio on Vimeo.

I would like to congratulate all the participants for the results  obtained during the Workshop , most of them had no prior experience with the softwares and yet  the learning speed of the course was really impressive.At the end , participants ended with the basic tools and knowledge to start developing their own algorithms in order to approach their design problems in parametric and generative way.

Here are some few images of the work made by students:

Small video documenting the workshop experience (SPANISH)

CHIDO STUDIO + PLATAFORMA ARQUITECTURA WORKSHOP from chido studio on Vimeo.

Contest Description
International design contest open for students and professionals to design a lamp for a living room ( floor , roof or wall) the production cost of the lamp should be of no more than $115.000USD All designs should be submitted before the 1 of June, A copy of the winning design will be part of Andares House in Ags, Mexico

The contest is open for architecture and design students and professionals in such disciplines that are less than 30 years old. BlobBox has the desire to support collaborative design schemes at international level , we strongly believe in the young talents , forums for design performance and to turn design into reality.
Therefore we commit ourselves to only fabricate two copies of the winning lamp and also to protect the intellectual value for such creation and design.

Note: The information of this form will be redirected to the contact team of BlobBox Studio who will be the ones answering all questions and recieving all submissions.

In gravity you orbit (follow) worlds, conversations and people it has a very warm and fuzzy interface that makes conversations very fun and easy going it also has an interface to share content (video , photo , links ) really easy wich brings lots of value to conversations , and the best part of all you win badges as your participation starts to grow this past days I have been feeling like a geek boy scout =).

Anyway the guys from gravity have  helped me set the Digital Architecture World , I would like to start using it as a forum to have conversations about all the subjects treated in this website , perhaps  talk about your recent projects, 3d softwares , tutorials and everything you may find interesting and valuable for our community , the only thing you have to do is to go to the gravity page and request your invite ,the service still is at an early phase so it´s a good time to jump aboard and build together a great and powerful community.

Firefly is a specialized set of tools created by Andrew Payne from LIFT architects dedicated to bridging the gap between the Arduino interface and Grasshopper. The first release comprises a new toolbar with two custom components. The Serial Read component allows you to retrieve any value coming over the Serial Port. This component is essential for anyone wishing to stream real-time sensor information into Grasshopper. The Serial Write component allows you to write a string value to the Serial Port. This can be a very effective tool for sending parametric data to your Arduino board to control some sort of actuator.
Robofun with Arduino, Grasshopper, FireFly from Chris Wilkins on Vimeo.

The guys from Morphocode have been working on their Rabbit plug-in for Grasshopper and have come up with the 0.2 version of it that has some interesting improvements you can download the tool from their site and remember to give your support if you have the chance.

RABBIT 0.2: New Cellular Automata features:

* user defined initial configurations
* automatic/manual control of the CA evolution
* CA memory – stores all configurations/states of the CA calculated for different time steps(t=0,1,2,3…)

With RABBIT 0.2 you could visualize 2D Cellular automata in 3 dimensions – the third dimension is a function of time.
RABBIT 0.2: New LSystems features:

* user defined LSystems
* fractals: Koch curves, Space-filling curves, …
* Branching LSystems
* 2d/3d Turtle interpretation

This is a call out for all rhino user enthusiasts, my friends at RhinoHelp.com have launched an  open competition for all Rhino modellers, a good opportunity to show and to presume your modelling and rendering skills to others ,for more information and submissions of  projects you can go to their  website , have fun.

Design & model a home appliance for year 2050
This contest is solely dedicated to modeling in Rhinoceros 3D modeling software.
In this contest, you are encouraged to try and imagine how would a home appliance look and feel like in a year 2050. It doesn’t have to be fully functionally thought through, but it definitely is a plus if you design into more detail.
Contest deadline
February 1st  -  May 1st
Contest prizes

1st prize

1. McNeel’s Rhinoceros v4.0 NFR (Not for resale)
2. 3Dconnexion’s SpaceNavigator

2nd prize

1. T-Splines, Inc.’s T-Splines v2 for Rhino
2. 3Dconnexion’s SpaceNavigator

3rd prize

1. 3Dconnexion’s SpaceNavigator

General rules

1. By submitting you agree that Rhino3DHelp.com and McNeel can use your submission, for promotional purposes.
2. Any submission must have been created in 2010 and can not have been featured in any other CG competition or awards.
3. By submitting to the Rhino3DHelp.com’s contest, you warrant that you have obtained permission to submit the works for public display.
4. Any attempt to circumvent any of the competition rules or voting systems will result in you and your company being disqualified and permanently banned from all future contests.
5. Judging will be performed by judges selected by Rhino3DHelp.com. Judges will be responsible for selection and scoring of all submitted images. Criteria for judging can be found on the Judging page.
6. Contestants should be registered on the forums, and need to create their WIP thread in the contest forum.
7. Contestants should post at least 1 WIP shot during the challenge and should comment on others work.
8. For final submission, contestants need to submit compressed (zip or rar) .3dm model for judging.
9. Deadline will be after three months from now.
10. All contestants must provide reliable contact information in their profile, if information provided does not allow us to contact you easily then placement and prizes will be adjusted accordingly to the next ranked entry.
11. Usage of 3rd party plugins is allowed, as long as it is in Rhino and contestants must have aprox. 60% of the scene modeled in classic Rhino way.
12. T-Splines plugin usage is allowed.
13. Modeling in Rhino is obligatory, models needs to be 100% created inside Rhino, and all contestants must provide .3dm model to the jury.

Competition Sponsors

So I tried to see if I could achieve this kind of aggregations using a 4-pod element like the one I saw on that project , to do it I revisit a code I saw once at Kokkugia´s wiki about recursive aggregations and tweaked a little bit to adapt it to the 4-pod elementmentioned before. The aggregated component was modeled using T-Splines for rhino as I´ve said in other occasions is great for organic modelling.The code it´s a little buggy and generate some replications in the same places but for a one day experiment I think is ok . If you are curious of trying it out and improve it please let me know.=)

In the next days I will be posting some experiments for surface tesselations on surafces using  Grasshopper if you want to keep updated you can suscribe to my RSS Feed

Script File:RecursiveAggregation01.rvb

Rhino File :Recursive4-Pod.3dm

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Release Improvements:
* BoxEdit: Can now accept units other than active unit system.
* Dimension Properties: A new button takes the user to the Style configuration page in the Options dialog box.
* Open: It is now possible to cancel opening files that are locked by another user.
* Purge: Options now persist between Rhino sessions.
* Save:DWG/DXF: Schemes can now be imported and exported through the Edit Schemes dialog and the AcadSchemes command.

Bug Fixes:

* BoxEdit: If you are in “Transform objects individually” mode, and if all objects have the same x, y, and/or z dimension, the corresponding edit fields did not show a delta. The same applies to the position fields. If objects share a pivot coordinate, then the position fields not longer display a delta. This is fixed.

* Contour: Some failure bugs have been fixed by new intersectors.
* CrvSeam: A failure bug has been fixed.
* DimRadius: Improvements in leader placement and editing.
* DimRadius: The behavior of the arrow location has been improved.
* ExtrudeCrv: Additional checking for invalid extrusions has been added.
* Object Snap: The object drag osnap is now delayed by default. When you select an object to drag it, you now have 250ms to do an old style non-osnapped drag. If the osnap was able to snap to something, the cursor tail will disappear, and after the delay the osnap will be activated, and you can do a precise drag from the osnapped point.
* Open/Save: The open and save file location incorrectly returned to the default location if Rhino 5 is closed without opening a file or using the SetWorkingDirectory command. This is fixed.
* Open:PDF: A problem with the unit settings has been fixed.
* Open:STP: A problem with importing onto layers that are off is fixed.
* Paste: A problem with pasting from the Edit menu selection has been fixed.
* Print: Minor changes to the dialog box layout have improved readability.
* RemoveMultiKnotSrf: Some problems with updating the display have been fixed.
* Save:DWG/DXF:
o When exporting or saving to DWG/DXF, the “Primary text length factor” is incorrectly not being set in the “Default” imported style from Rhino. The AutoCAD control variable DIMLFAC is now set to match the corresponding length factor.
o Special characters in layer names were lost. This is fixed.
o Layer names with mixed upper and lower case were incorrectly converted to upper case. This is fixed.
* SelLast: A problem with selecting inappropriate objects has been fixed.
* VariableFilletEdge: Several failure bugs have been fixed.

Spread the word =D

studies with Giulio Piacentino’s new ‘WeaverBird’ plugin for Rhino by Stuart Fingerhut

Description Straight from the site

This is an early release of WeaverBird (version 0.1.16), a plugin for topological transformations in Rhino 4.0 and Grasshopper 0.6.0043 or 0.6.0019.

Main topological commands:

- wbCatmullClark. Calculates the type of mesh-based recursive subdivision described by Edwin Catmull and Jim Clark, at first in their 1978 paper. The resulting mesh always consists of quad faces.

- wbFrame. Computes a new mesh with higher genus, where each face has a new hole in the center and resembles a picture frame. The resulting mesh always consists of quad faces.

- wbCarpet. Computes a new mesh with higher genus, where each face has a new hole in the center. The resulting mesh always consists of quad faces, and can be used to compute a Sierpinski carpet.

- wbWindow. Replaces each original mesh face with a new one, reconstructed on the inside. Each face has the same number of sides as the original one.

New mesh primitives definitions:

- wbPrism

- wbPyramid

- wbDiPyramid

Additional commands for tweaking:

- wbOptions. To set threading and other options.

- wbProperties. Opens a window with topological information about any mesh object in Rhino.

Apparently  2010 seems to  be te year of Grasshopper lately we have been watching the appearance  of some grasshopper plugins like Rabbit 1.0 , WaveBird and Modetools developed by independent design studios , I predict this tendency will grow this year and we will see some pretty amazing stuff developed for this tool.

If  all this  was not enough  today David Rutten anounced the new WIP version 0.6.0055 Grasshopper 2009 Gold Edition , sounds very fancy right? actually it is this incorporates some new and interesting widgets, one that calls my attention is the Markov widget wich chains to ‘guess’ which component you want to use next based on your behaviour in the past.

I still can remember a little more than a year ago when I downloaded the first version of Grasshopper , (called Explicit History in those days ) it had very few components but for somebody who had to learn rhinoscript the hard way was easy to see the hidden potential of the tool, I ´m happy to see what it has become, with every realease they appear lots of  features I wouldn´t even imagine it could have, can´t really say how version 1.0 is going to be, but I can say its going to be something HUGE for the world of parametric design softwares.

While that happens I invite you to try out this version wich can be downloaded from HERE and as always have fun.

What features do you thing will appear in the future or which ones you thing are missing ?

Improvements for this version (straight from the site)
This release fixes a number of reasonably serious bugs:
- VB and C# components would have problems loading referenced assemblies from unexpected folders. This is (at least somewhat) fixed.
- Enabling objects would fail to properly enable input parameters for components, this is fixed.
- Probably some other ones too, my bookkeeping skills leave something to be desired.

It also offers some new functionality:
- A new Group object has been added. Groups allow you to visually link several components. Group colour cannot yet be changed, but by double clicking the group, the outline mode can be toggled.

- A new Markov widget has been added. This widget uses Markov chains to ‘guess’ which component you want to use next based on your behaviour in the past. It takes a while for it to get accustomed to you as a special and unique and lovable individual, so don’t expect miracles right away.

- A new Profiler widget has been added (off by default). The profiler lists worst-case runtimes for parameters and components, allowing you to track down bottlenecks in networks and to compare different components in terms of performance.

- All widgets now have proper tooltips.

- Mouse picking has been improved. Different actions are now handled better and especially making new wires should be somewhat easier.

- Toolbars now draw separators between different groups of objects. Separators can be disabled via the View menu.

- Fuzzy searching has been improved.

- Scribbles now allow font sizes up to 100pt.

- All Complex Number components have been moved into their own Tab.

- Tabs are now scrollable when the width of all tabs exceeds the width of the window.

And of course a couple of new components (to be honest, I have no idea which ones are new since the last release):

- Repeat Data
- Random Reduce
- Domain Inclusion
- String Concatenation
- Sinc (Sinus Cardinalis) trigonometry function
- Spherical Cloud
- Sort Points
- Vector Rotate and Vector Mass Addition (are these really new? … I forgot)
- Curve Dash pattern
- Nurbs Curve Control Points
- Metaball with custom charge overrides
- Curve self-intersections