Guest editor: Gijs de Zwart

Gijs de Zwart is a landmark as it comes to Rhino visualisation, therefore I am very proud to announce that he will be guest editor at this blog. Furthermore he will co-operate with the RhinoCentre as a visualisation specialist offering several services.

For more info about the Studio Quality Rendering Tutorial, click on the picture

Most people know Gijs from his Studio Quality Rendering Tutorial for Flamingo he made a few years ago. Since then he developed himself into rendering with V-Ray for Rhino and has a good relation with ASGVIS as a beta tester. ASGVIS is the company behind V-Ray for Rhino.

V-Ray image by Gijs de Zwart

Being a specialist in visualisation he will share some of his experiences and knowledge at this blog. Furthermore he will offer visualisation class training at RhinoCentre in the near future.
Please take a look at his company website, StudioGijs, if you like to know more about his competences.

Related links:

• Flamingo Rendering Plugin website
• Studio Quality Rendering Tutorial webpage
• V-Ray for Rhino website
• V-ray for Rhino training at RhinoCentre delivered by Gijs de Zwart
• StudioGijs website
  

Explicit History Plugin for visual scripting

Click on the screenshot to see a demo I made
(play with it yourself and download the demo files below)

Most designers have a visual perception of the world, which makes Rhino a superb tool to present and visualise ideas and designs. Furthermore the user interface of Rhino is quite visual oriented if you compare it to older CAD software.
One feature of Rhino though isn't visual at all, it's called scripting. To make use of scripts, you have to write a program (code) which can be executed in order to generate geometry in Rhino.
Why script? With these 'little' and 'custom' programs designers make clever use of Rhino in order to make fast design variations, or create smart repetitive design elements. Another application of scripting is to solve technical features based on parameters which influence the form, position or orientation of geometry.

Rhino facade script for UN Studio's Light*house Aarhus Harbor Front
Image courtesy 3XN and UNStudio

Leading architects, for example, use scripts more and more to be able to design stunning and functional architecture. This is quite an achievement as they have to switch to another mindset in order to program their scripts instead of modeling surfaces straight away.
David Rutten of McNeel & Associates, the company behind Rhino, developed a new way to create scripts for Rhino on a visual basis. After David created the Monkey Script Editor to make scripting for Rhino more easy, he created the Explicit History Plug In which brings scripting to designers even better!

If this plugin doesn't make you script, you probably never will!

As the Explicit History Plugin is full under development you can try it out for free and help David to develop it even better. Read more and download a free work in progress version to try it out yourself:

• Explicit History Wiki Pages, for plugin download and to see how it works
• Download the files from the demo to try out yourself
• small You Tube movie examples
• rhino newsgroup to join the club
• Live Architecture Blog; parametrics in Architecture with an article about explicit history

Display Faces and Naked edges

Blue backfaces and magenta naked edges

Important for high quality modeling in Rhino is the direction of surfaces and naked edges. The direction of a surface should be outwards of the model to calculate volumes properly. Furthermore it is important to see which edges of the model are naked for nice renderings and to make your model watertight for molds and volume calculations.
In Rhino 4 it is easy to create new displays and I made one for face direction and naked edge analysis. In the screenshot above you see that backfaces are blue and naked edges magenta.

How can you use this advanced display?

• dowload this FacesEdges.ini file
• watch the instructional video and make it work

Labels Rhino Aspects

01 Modeling, 02 Rendering, 03 Engineering, 04 CAM, 05 User Interface