Granules in OpenScad

What if I had a device that was capable of placing individual molecules of stuff within a 3D volume? What I need for tools is a volumetric rendering sort of thing. What?

This 'thing' is a set of simple tools that begin to build up a 3D/2D rendering library in OpenScad.

Of course, you already have Processing, and with a .stl exporter, what's the need of such a thing? It's just fun.

What can you do with it? Well, you do this in OpenScad:

include Render2D.scad

gPmm = 4; // How many granules per millimeter

And then you start doing things like:

line(1,1,10,10);
fillRectangle(10,11, 20, 20, [[1,0,0],[1,1,0],[0,1,1],[0,0,1]]);

And what good is that? Well, at the very least, you can start creating simple 2D shapes using familiar graphics programming constructs, lines, bezier curves, rectangles, circles, and the like. Mostly things that are already supported in OpenScad.

But, in another couple of versions, you'll also be able to use curves and surfaces to make more interesting shapes.

If these seems like a bunch of gibberish right now, just wait a few more versions and you'll see more interesting stuff develop.

UPDATE: I've cheated. The picture with the nice curvy lookiing thing is actually generated by the BezierSurface function, which is not actually in the library as yet. I'm trying to figure out tweaks to make it not quite so resource intensive. but, it looks good!

Instructions

1) Play around with the various primitives
2) Dream abot what you'll be doing with a fairly robust graphics system in OpenScad
3) Rejoice!

Category: Other