Grasshopper product transferred to R-D llc.

As of today, the Grasshopper trademark and source codes are no longer owned by Robert McNeel & Associates as we've negotiated the acquisition of the product by Recursive Development llc. R-D is a new company specifically founded for continued Grasshopper development. There will be an official press release early next week.

The main purpose of this transfer is to put Grasshopper on a firm commercial footing and to guarantee development on 3D platforms other than Rhino.

In the meantime, this forum will remain active and McNeel employees will continue to provide support until the transition is complete.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Choco Choc on April 1, 2011 at 7:08am

I'd feel so stupid <_<

Permalink Reply by Choco Choc on April 1, 2011 at 6:32am

Hi David,

What programs do you have in mind ? Can we have a first list ?

Since in Sketchup users don't define points but only lines is it possible to adapt GH to it ?

Do you mind GPL programs like Blender ?

Permalink Reply by Choco Choc on April 1, 2011 at 7:09am

ok didn't see the tag

X__________x

You'll pay for that David !!!

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on April 1, 2011 at 3:29pm

I think (i could be wrong) Grasshopper is just a good looking GUI but pretty much useless without the Rhino core. It would probably be easier to start from scratch than try to make Grasshopper work on another 3d platform.

A reason i could think of for buying it is if McNeel had filed any patents associated with GH, a large company might want to expand their patent portfolio.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 2, 2011 at 3:23am

Hi Vicente,

not really. There's a lot of code in Grasshopper that isn't UI and isn't geometry. We basically switched platforms a few months back when switching to RhinoCommon. It's of course an SDK with a large amount of overlap with the previous one (something you won't get when porting to another application), but everything had to be updated. And it didn't take all that long.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on April 4, 2011 at 7:08am

I'm sure there is a lot of code that can be reused. But I think some people expect it's like a render engine that can be easily ported from one platform to another since most of the code is really platform independent, you just have to hook it up to the rendering GUI and grab the meshes/lights/etc. It would be much harder to continue paralel development of Grasshopper for Sketchup, Rhino, 3dsmax, etc, since those Grasshoppers would look very different from each other. (Again, this is my intuition, i might be very wrong).

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 4, 2011 at 9:02am

You're right of course that it probably wouldn't be the same product on all those platforms. Some functions might not be available at all on some other SDK, so certain components would be different. But the components are actually all plug-ins to Grasshopper, Grasshopper itself doesn't require any of the geometric functions, apart from Drawing routines and Boundingbox calculations.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Ivo A. Semerdjiev on April 1, 2011 at 6:54am

hahhaha

good april 1st joke :)

Permalink Reply by Jaroslaw Sakowicz on April 1, 2011 at 7:24am

well, such a potential transfer might generate tons of $ for developer - ha? well deserved.

Yarek,

Permalink Reply by Andres Gonzalez on April 1, 2011 at 8:41am

Yes, it is in Latin America, you can send your money our way!

We do promise a very good interest!

Have a very nice April!

Permalink Reply by Oleg Kostour on April 1, 2011 at 8:44am

lol, I met a few guys working for Autodesk in a bar yesterday in Toronto, even they think the company is evil. I hate April fools. I hope to god this is a joke.

Permalink Reply by Oleg Kostour on April 1, 2011 at 8:46am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfCcggjBlsw&feature=player_embedded This is how I feel about getting fooled.