A furry font designed with max’s hair and fur modifier.

The “Curve CP” node in Grasshopper allows a curve to act in a similar manner to a point attractor, but checks the distance for the closest points along the entire length of the curve as opposed to one single, solitary point. Here, the curves are generated from a text object. It basically becomes multiple attractor curves, something that could be used for super graphics or possible a glazing frit pattern. Things get a little hairy in the grasshopper definition (see below) when you start getting a lot of letters, so that needs to get resolved for this to work with an entire sentence, or anything longer than four letters. A script font that creates one continuous line would work perfect, but is something of a cop-out, so in the meantime I may have to consult the pros on the grasshopper forum.

A simple test based on Sanghoon Yoon’s Grasshopper definition for using the new image sampler node, I swapped out a text image for an image image, because, well I just like fonts and 3D I guess. One of the things that’s cool is that the image is “live,” so as you change the text, the grasshopper definition updates. And of course you can also parametrically control the size of the pixels, the multiplication of the heightfield and the overall size of the surface. To get a random color on each polysurface, I modified Dale Fugier’s script located on the rhinoscript wiki page to include a function to assign the object color to the material color so it will render out in vray. See grasshopper definition and code below:

Edit: Added Link to download grasshopper definition and source image file. Click Here (zip file).

From Dale Fugier’s ObjectColor.rvb:

Sub SetObjectColorRandom

Dim objects, red, green, blue, i, material

objects = Rhino.GetObjects(“Select objects for randomly color change”, 0, True, True)
If IsNull(objects) Then Exit Sub

Rhino.EnableRedraw False
For i = 0 To UBound(objects)
red = Int(125 * Rnd)
green = Int(200 * Rnd)
blue = Int(180)
Rhino.ObjectColor objects(i), RGB(red, green, blue)

Call Rhino.ObjectColor (objects(i), RGB(red, green, blue))
material = rhino.AddMaterialToObject (objects(i))
Call rhino.MaterialColor (material, RGB(red, green, blue))
Call rhino.MaterialShine (material, 255)
Next
Rhino.EnableRedraw True

End Sub

I have a love / hate relationship with Helvetica. If I knew anything about fonts, I probably wouldn’t use it so much. And while it’s not Norm’s or Lacma, after watching the documentary there is no doubt that helvetica must burn!

Also seen in my freelance work blog at lioninoil.net.