Grasshopper lvl 2 – Growth

“Grasshopper lvl 2 – Growth” is an advanced grasshopper workshop, dealling with agent based modeling. Starting from simple geometrical manipulations, the workshop aims to delve into the area of swarm intelligence and behavioural design. Over the course of this exploration, the students will have the opportunity to experiment with forms of extreme intricacy, unachievable through more conventional means of design. More than this, however, they will get to experiment with problem solving strategies that lie within the realm of the populational.

Taking into consideration the measures for COVID-19, the workshop will be presented in a hybrid form, both through physical and digital presence. The mode of participation remains at the students discretion, unless further measures are enforced.

Structure

The course will begin with a series of warm up exercises on data trees management, vector fields and subdivision, but will quickly move onto iterative functions and based modeling. At decode™ we believe effective training needs an intriguing goal instead of generic exercises. Towards this direction, wherever applicable, we will try to analyze and recreate our own versions of well renowned computational design projects.

Taking into consideration that this is an advanced workshop, knowledge will be presented at an accelerated pace. The students will be expected to create their own fabricatable files at the end of each tutorial, to be tested at our fab lab.

Curriculum

During the course of this class, students will be introduced to the concept of iterative functions through a series of guided tutorials of rapidly increasing complexity, while working towards the goal of creating a library of large scale 3d printed objects for a yet undisclosed exhibition. Working heavily with Mateusz Zwierzycki’s “Anemone” plugin that provides an interface for feedback loops within Grasshopper, the students will visit the following topics:

• Iteration vs Recursion
• Fractals
• L-systems
• Recursive subdivisions
• Agent movement in vector fields
• Agent interaction
• Boids
• Variable growth

Pre-requisites

Requires Windows skills and desire to create. This workshop is best suited for users with intermediate knowledge of Grasshopper, with a good understanding of basic computational design principles. A previous working experience with grasshopper is deemed mandatory. A general understanding of basic physical and mathematical principles is also considered highly helpful, but an explanatory lecture will be given where needed.

All participants are required to have:

• Their personal laptop with them. Additional NUC computers can be provided after timely communication.
• Rhinoceros3d V6.0 pre-installed. You can download a 90-days evaluation version from www.rhino3d.com/download . Grasshopper now comes pre-installed within Rhino 6!
• ZBrush 2021 pre-installed, for mesh post processing purposes.  You can download the trial version at https://pixologic.com/zbrush/trial/
• Lots of patience and positive thinking, learning is fun after all!