Recently, I figured that there was a command for zebra in which you can see the 3D figure as a striped figure. is there a way to save the zebra pattern in any way, similar to how Make2d exports the 3d figure projected from a specific angle, to a vector graphic file with each white and black stripe being it’s own path?
i believe not, what you could do instead is try to project an array of lines onto your surface instead
no this is not possible, but you can export it as image, then use _Vectorize (on PackageManager) to convert it into a vector image.
encephalon is that really what it does? some of the time, zebra shows it as concentric circles, so i’m unsure if it will produce the same effect.
Other CAD programs are capable of extracting the Zebra stripes (both, static and dynamic). Rhino only has a dynamic Zebra. However, the VSR plug-in for Rhino 5 has a great static Zebra, which is way more important for NURBS surfacing.
Some cars even use zebra stripes as a form of art. For example, once of these nice cars is the Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport L’Or Blanc.
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hello gijs! do you mind explaining how zebra works under the hood? i don’t know what it is used for but it looks cool certainly. i just want them as mathematically correct as possible, and i know vectorizers tend to estimate rather than extrapolating the functions.
this seems to be close enough to what it does, so i’m relatively happy. if any of the devs know if it is made of some other function i’d like to know it too, thanks ben and encephalon!
please notice, that there is a fundamental difference between projection and reflection.
Projected lines will not show a gab on a kink, reflections will.
zebra is a reflection of black and white stripes on a virtual perfect reflecting / mirroring surface.
the concept is also used in real live, for quality control:
check out the command
_viewcaptureToFile
and increase the scale Factor to 1.3, 1.5 or or even 2 … (attention with 2 you get a 4 time bigger picture)
but this will allow more resultion for a later retracing / vectorisation.
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‘fundamental’ is maybe a bit harsh. the only thing that’s missing (as you said) is the order towards the camera. if fill them in the correct order in illustrator (or whatever you use) this will have the same result.
but you’ve got a very valid point
hello tom! that was an interesting fact! since I don’t know how to do reflected projections in rhino, I am atleast glad that there are options.
hello ben, how did you set project to a specific angle? by default it projects down to the cplane, so i have to duplicate it and rotate the lines and the plane so i have to duplicate the structure and then rotate it so the lines are on top of the model then project…
Help has the answer:
Project | Rhino 3-D modeling (mcneel.com)
Direction
Specifies the direction for the projection. These settings are saved during your editing session.
CPlaneZ
Projects objects in the construction plane z direction.
View
Projects objects in the view direction.
Custom
Pick two points to specify the projection direction.
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So sorry I didn’t respond in time, i was in holiday, but luckily our lovely David Cockey came to help