3D object mapping to surface? snow & hillz

GH,

So I encountered the image below and wanted to figure out how to do it in grasshopper. I think it has something to do with normals...

Say I have a single tree (brep) and a flowy hill (surface), how would I project multiples of this tree around the hill and have each aligning itself with the normal of the surface it happens to be on? I guess this question is basically "how do I do what this picture does? However, I want to be able to do it parametrically so that I can have whatever surface I want with whatever object I want projected on it in multiples and in response to the infinitude of normals of the surface?

Thanks!

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Hyungsoo Kim on December 14, 2014 at 12:04am

Quick imitation.

Attachments:

snow & hillz.gh, 21 KB

Permalink Reply by Eric Lawler on December 14, 2014 at 8:45pm

This helps so much, I'm grateful! This is exactly what I am looking for.

However, a second step I would like to take would be to apply these trees (or whatever geometry) to a mesh surface. I have a definition I like to use which creates these nicely variable surfaces based off images, but the output is a mesh. And even when these meshes are converted to polysrf (the image below is a polysrf that was once a mesh), I can only select a single part of this polysrf, as if it can't recognize the entire thing as one surface. Is there a way to apply this to a mesh?

Permalink Reply by Hyungsoo Kim on December 14, 2014 at 10:27pm

This version is for mesh surface.

Attachments:

snow & hillz(On a Mesh Surf).gh, 21 KB

Permalink Reply by Eric Lawler on December 15, 2014 at 9:15pm

Amazing, thank you hyungsoo. it works perfectly. thanks for all the time you spent on it. i love how it looks without the surface, with them just floating along phantom curved surfaces.