La Danza | Advanced Digital Tools

During the Advanced Digital Tools classes, we were introduced to various aspects of the parametric design software Grasshopper. Weekly, we had assignments to review the components / tools learned in class. At last, we had one final exercise to combine everything we were taught during the course into one final animation. Though we had some previous Grasshopper knowledge, the use of animations was very new to us, and we enjoyed the learning process very much. Together with Karla, we decided to explore the animation of origami-like birds.

We divided the script into 4 parts:

1. Assembly and disassembly of the bird
2. Movement of the wings
3. Dance of the flying birds
4. Camera movement

In this final script, we combined everything we learned, using list manipulations, remapping numbers, colouring of meshes etc. to obtain the desired results.

Pt1_(Dis)Assembly of the bird

1. The bird is composed of different Breps, which are moved out a certain distance
2. These are then reassembled by simply moving them back in the contrary direction

For this part, we mainly worked with the movement components, as learned during the first class.

Pt2_WingMovement

1. The edges of the wing shapes are extracted
2. The right edge is selected around which the wing will be rotated
3. A slider is connected to a GraphMapper with a sine curve, turning input values between 0 and 1 to values between -30 to 70 which are then used as angle for the rotation. Using the sinus graph mapper also ensure a smooth closing and opening of the wings + colour according to the angle

The most important component for this part, was the GraphMapper component, allowing us to change the values from a linear slider to a sinusoidal value, between -30 and 70. Additionally, the mesh has been coloured according to the opening angle of the wings.

Pt3a_DanceCurve

1. Creation of different points
2. Generating curves, rotating around each other by interpolating these points

The curves were generated using the series component as well as the multiplication, sinus and cosinus components.

Pt3b_Dance

1. Evaluate the curves from previous parts
2. Move the OG bird to these points
3. Orientation of a bird towards the centre of the curve by evaluating the angle between its body and its distance to the centre

The curves were evaluated using the EvaluateCurve component while the birds were moved using the MoveToPoint component from the Pufferfish plug-in.

Pt4_CameraMovement

1. First move camera from close-up to a general view (by saving 3 different views)
2. Then let the general view be animated

Finally, the camera-movement was obtained using the Centipede and AnimateCamera components, from the Animation and Horster plug-in respectively. This Centipede component was also used to animate every other part of the script, as it allows to basically when which component will be activated and with which value.