Lofting a Metaball

Hi there, I am trying to make a loft out of a meatball, I have tried lofting the separate curves all together but it seems to get confused and doesn't work, does anybody know an easier way to smoothly loft the whole meatball together?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Chris Hanley on October 21, 2014 at 12:29pm

there has been some work done about meshing metaballs.

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/profiles/blogs/metaball-meshing

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/profiles/blogs/marching-cubes-curve-wr...

Permalink Reply by Hyungsoo Kim on October 21, 2014 at 4:24pm

Hi! Eugenia.

Typically, metaball generated curves are not good sources for loft surface.

So, in order to avoid typical twisted outcome, you should unify each curve direction and adjust curve seams first.

and you'd better use loft option for decent outcome.

Plus, you can get a nice result using Mesh loft component and adding weaverbird subdivision component, can get even better mesh.

Hope This Helps.

Permalink Reply by Eugenia Reyes on October 23, 2014 at 5:02pm

Thanks Kim! I think I am getting there I just cant seem to find the component you have grouped as ¨closed mesh¨ is that a plug in or a loft option?

Permalink Reply by Hyungsoo Kim on October 23, 2014 at 11:44pm

Mesh loft is a plug-in component.

You can find it in here

Permalink Reply by John O'Keefe on August 10, 2016 at 8:56pm

Hi Hyunqsoo, I can't locate it from that link - can you upload the file?

Permalink Reply by Laurent DELRIEU on August 10, 2016 at 11:42pm

It must be in Mesh tools.gha !

Permalink Reply by Hyungsoo Kim on August 11, 2016 at 12:00am

Sign-in the Milkbox group.

Permalink Reply by John O'Keefe on August 20, 2016 at 2:44pm

Thank you Hyunqsoo - I've duplicated the script (I believe) but was hoping you could tell me what the expressions are in the 'End Tip point for Closed Mesh' in the list item and move components?

John

Attachments:

metaballlofting_JOK.gh, 16 KB

Permalink Reply by Hyungsoo Kim on August 21, 2016 at 12:01am

Here we have revised def.

Attachments:

MetaballSectionLoft.gh, 20 KB

Permalink Reply by John O'Keefe on August 21, 2016 at 10:22am

Thank you Hyunqsoo - this si great. If you could send me the expressions from the first def I'd appreciate it - would really help me figure what's happening...

Permalink Reply by Hyungsoo Kim on August 21, 2016 at 10:52am

List item --> "x-1"
Move --> "-x"

Permalink Reply by Yafim Simanovsky on December 6, 2015 at 8:35am

Hi Hyungsoo,

In your script, the seam function works well to loft it because basically the metaball is a series of curves one after the other, but if you try for example to create metaballs from a cloud of points on a single plane, then at many parameters there is not just "one" linear series of curves, but some of them don't intersect, so you have separate curves here and there at the ends of some of the metaballs, that don't 'join up' to the main curve.

This kinda makes lofting impossible... (it can be seen from the seam point that there are a few points separate from the main point line).

Is there any way to solve this?

Thanks!