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Auto Entourage




Adding entourage images into architectural illustrations can be a painstaking process, especially for larger-scale projects.

Auto Entourage is a Grasshopper plug-in for loading PNG images into Rhino. The plug-in parametrizes the heights and placements of the images, allowing users to populate a 3D scene swiftly. Users can directly render entourages alongside digital models, obviating the arduous post-production workflow for renderings.



Type: software plugin
Role: design, development and maintenance
Implementation: Python, Grasshopper, Rhino3d
Date: 2020

︎︎︎view source
︎︎︎Download on Food4Rhino


plugin tutorial


demo: populating a 2d boundary



demo: populating a street design



demo: populating a topography


Plugin


The plugin consists of two components: imgCrop and AutoEntourage. The preprocess images by cropping out empty margins while the second one loads them into Rhino.


Usage


  • Download plugin into Grasshopper's components folder. Restart Rhino/Grasshopper and launch the components using shortcuts crop and ae. Alternatively, locate the components in "display" -> "preview" in the grasshopper menu.

  • Use imgCrop to batch preprocess images by specifying a path to the image folder, and out as a destinate to save the processed images.

  • Use AutoEntourage to load processed entourages into Rhino by specifying a path to the image folder, a set of anchor point to locate the entourages, as well as the imgheight for scaling their heights.


Notes


  • AutoEntourage will take item, list, or trees as input, and behaves similarly to the default grasshopper components.

  • Run imgCrop once to preprocess images and reuse them for all future projects.

  • AutoEntourage will take items, lists or trees as input. (With the exception of layerName input). You can expect the component to behave similarly to other default Grasshopper components.

  • When using AutoEngourage, as long as the inputs are unchange, you can load entourages once, and use orient to align entourages to different views.
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