Release of EvoluteTools T.MAP *beta*

As a general rule, please follow this example:

  1. Select your NURBS and use _Mesh to create a mesh from it. Make sure “Jagged seams” is not checked in the detailed controls. As a rule of thumb the density of this mesh should be significantly higher than the density you would like to achieve for the quad mesh. The more vertices the longer T.MAP will take computing.
  2. Use _TriangulateMesh to make sure the mesh consists only of triangles.
  3. Use _Weld to merge duplicate vertices.
  4. Start etTMap.

you could try the curve to mesh from Giulio in the Rhino WIP

Hi, the newest release of T.MAP has meshing built-in, no need anymore to create a mesh from the curves.

2 Likes

May I suggest to perform the T.MAP-ing on a background thread while keeping Rhino responsive? Currently I’m looking at a whited-over Rhino instance with “Not Responding” on it.

Hi Menno, many thanks for your feedback. This is certainly a good idea, we will look into it.
Let me ask the following:

  1. Did T.MAP show you the progress of the calculation in the progress bar?
  2. Did T.MAP produce a result?
  3. How many vertices does your input mesh consist of?
  1. I’m not sure - as I said the Rhino instance whited over and said “Not Responding” for a while.
  2. Yes
  3. Approx 50k - I tried to reproduce the example of the sphere above.

Many thanks for letting us know. We will work on making it more user friendly. Were the results up to your expectations?

When starting from a default sphere, the results in the poles is not good. I guess this is unavoidable due to singularity nature of the control points. Other tests are satisfactory.

I did notice that the mapping is not continuous over a seam, for example when doing a Torus (indenpendent of Curvature or Boundary type)

Hi Menno,

if you use the settings proposed by Alex in his previous post to mesh your torus there shouldn’t be a seam to begin with. As Alex mentioned, this will be done automatically in the background in the next release:

Best,
Mathias

Perfect that works, thanks for pointing out the instructions :smile:

Sorry for hijacking this thread but Olivier how did you do these objects? I assume not in rhino, or am I wrong (Tspline, Grasshopper?). And just started testing T.Map, and I really like it, thanks for handing it out for free, until launch!
Regards
Per

Why have you included utterly no instructions or sample files, just some texture images? I have no idea what curves I’m supposed to select or create to select. I can push keys and work a mouse as good as anybody, but I do need to know which keys to actually push and if you don’t actually explain it, which keys to push will remain a mystery since “ParametrizationFromMesh failed” is not useful feedback. And what is “mixed integer parametrization” anyway? The descriptions claim I input a mesh and with one click I get some sort of quad output. But the actual commands want a second mesh or some sort of curves as input as well.

Nik, many thanks for your feedback. I agree that the user interface can be improved. Instructions can be found in the help file: Please F1 after starting etTmap to open the help file for EvoluteTools T.MAP, or go to

Help -> Plug-Ins -> EvoluteTools T.MAP

In short, T.MAP either aligns the mesh with curvature directions (no need to select anything else) or user-specified curve directions (in this case you will be asked to select the curves you want to align to).
You can download an example file here. We are looking forward to your feedback. In case you have trouble remeshing with T.MAP, please post your example here or send it to support@evolute.at.

A final beta version of T.MAP has just been released. Find out about it here, including a lengthy description of the plug-in features and download links: http://blog.evolute.at/?p=685
We are still working on final improvements to the interface, smoothing the results and using sharp features for alignments, these will all be present in the commercial release.
As always, we are happy to receive any type of feedback!

Sorry for late reply, I have used Tspline to make those shapes.
Regards.

An update to EvoluteTools T.MAP beta is available for download, including

  • mesh extraction: several fixes in boundary treatment
  • added option None for directions

Hi,

I have installed the lastest T.MAP beta (Loading EvoluteTools T.MAP 2.5.15 (151122_EVOLUTETOOLS_PRO_2_5)…)
and since then my rhino5 (SR12) will not fully shut down anymore. This means that rhino seems to be closed, but in the taskmanager I can still find a rhino process consuming 200 MB of RAM.
When I start another rhino this is very sluggish and only killing the processes will help.

Furthermore the toolbar will never save where it had been relocated, so I have to do this over and over again.

No workaround needed, just to let you know for further investigation.

Hi, many thanks for letting us know about these problems. We aim to fix both in the next beta release, next week. Does the shutting down problem happen every time you use T.MAP? Did you find T.MAP useful in general?

Yes it happens every time I am shutting down rhino. Only condition is to
start the T.MAP no need to do anything else on rhino.

T.MAP looks promising, but seems to be a little limited if we want boundaries like limits on beam length and evened out distribution of lengths etc.
I guess that it will somehow link into the workflow of the evolutetools, isn’t it?

Many thanks for your feedback.

Please let me know whether I understood correctly:

  • You would like to be able to specify a maximum edge length.
  • Distribution of edge lengths: T.MAP basically distributes edge lengths as equally as possible. What would you like to be able to influence?

Certainly T.MAP can nicely be combined with EvoluteTools LITE / PRO, but it’s meant to work as a standalone product.

Again, many thanks for your feedback, pleased don’t hold back if you have more.

PS: The toolbar problem has been fixed in the meanwhile and will be part of next week’s release. We are still looking into the shutdown problem.