Using ShapeDiverImageInput to define texture URLs on the fly

[pavol]

It is good approach to have only one model with all shape variations and different materials. Loading external textures with SDImageInput gives you flexibility to update your material collection and any image which is part of the material definition in Grasshopper will get cached to improve performance. Keep in mind that if you change the texture but the URL stays the same, the cached original will be rendered.

Does an external image link get embedded in the Shapediver file?

ShapeDiver’s caching system stores all processed solutions to speed up the computation time as explained here. If the link hasn’t changed, the original cached texture is used. You need to add a query string at the end of the link, for example a timestamp: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/matsnielsen/myfiles/master/flexi-teek-texture.jpg?time=TIMESTAMP The caching system then takes it as a different URL and updates the image on the server side. I hope this helps.

A few important points regarding textures:

• keep textures reasonably small, ideally below 1MB (files larger than 4MB will not work)
• make sure to use seamless textures for the best results
• textures should be square and sizes of 256, 512, 1024 or 2048px

Find more details in this article:

Texture Mapping Explained!