Glass spheres in concrete

I'm trying to replicate the same physical properties of this material into a concrete and glass sphere combination. I have made a script but it seems very inefficient by slowing down my computer when the number of spheres are increased. Is there a better way to rewrite this script? Or is there another way to better represent glass spheres in concrete?Glass%20Ball%20script.gh

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Stasiuk on March 21, 2013 at 12:47am

I guess the question would be: what's the purpose of your modeling exercise? Are you looking to model the surface condition, or a thickness with significant material depth, like a slab? Your definition is slowing down because the nurbs spheres you're creating a very computationally heavy...anytime you do a surface rhino/gh have to work very hard to represent it. Off the bat the easiest thing you can do is convert your spheres into meshes (the attached runs really light, for example, with 1000 spheres). This can create other problems, though, but again it all really depends on where you're going with your idea.

Permalink Reply by Micaiah Fletcher on March 22, 2013 at 1:02pm

Thank you for your help. I am seeking a resolution for both. Modeling a surface condition that represents an amalgamation of solid glass spheres that can transmit light, reflect light, and provide some visibility to the interior/exterior but at the same time are hardened into the thickness of a concrete slab, wall, or ceiling.

Permalink Reply by Hannes Löschke on March 22, 2013 at 1:45pm

I guess you are trying to use this in a rendner. Only for very close up shots geometry will be superior to texture maps. If you are talking about a concrete matrix, you will probably get no or negligable light transmission. For the other effects you might get away with a reflection map.

Permalink Reply by Micaiah Fletcher on March 22, 2013 at 2:38pm

Thank you for your help. Well I suppose I would make the glass almost structural with the possibility of translucent concrete surrounding the glass spheres. For a reflection map, would you know if that also reflects light?

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