Anyone know of a good tool or script to array a component across a surface, deforming/tapering the sides to prevent interference etc?
I just tried the Paneling Tools for Rhino, they are pretty nice but not parametric enough… yet. I"m sure if I learned rhino script and grasshopper it would help.
But I would like something like this for max. Build a surface of quads and replace every poly with a component. Deformed by the average normals of the neighboring polies i suppose…
http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Markets/Building/GenerativeComponents/more\_info.htm
…this any good?
SlideKnit: http://slidelondon.com/iv
“This tool can help you lay things out on the surface of complex objects which have been UV-mapped.For example, you could craft an intricately-detailed knit-pattern mesh in a flat plane, then wrap this around a sweater-shaped mesh.”
http://slidelondon.com/\_downloads/SlideKnit.zip
might get you 90% there. 
no… unless i’m missing something, that doesn’t seem to help. It just takes the surface mesh, flattens and unwraps it according to the UVs. It then adds a Morpher mod to wrap the mesh back to the original form. I don’t see how this would work with what I’m looking for but thanks for the tip. This could be a useful script.
I want to take a small, individual component, (or a list of components) and array them across a surface; where each component would fit in the bounds of each surface poly.
don’t know of anything similar for max, and I’m not familiar enough with maxscript to have tried anything in max, but I have been messing around with panelingtools and grasshopper: http://ncodon.wordpress.com/
Grasshopper is a great plugin, and fairly easy to learn. Should even be possible to combine panelingtools and grasshopper if you know a bit of VBscript.
There are some good tutorials on designreform.net on using 3dsmax in a parametric way, but you can only really go so far.. worth a look though.
Yeah, that’s where I got excited, using the paneling plug-in for rhino. But it is a memory hog with complex panel shapes. A friend of mine just bought GEM from paracloud and says he has had a lot of success.
I’m a floundering noob of a max scriptor. I’ve watched several MaxScript DVDs repeatedly and a lot of it is sinking in slowly. I know there has to be a way of deforming a panel using the averaged normals of a polygon. I’ll float over to CGTalk and see if I can hook Bobo on the subject.