Number of units: 2
My inspiration is from the gigantic 3D cat billboard around Shinjuku Station, Tokyo. I think such billboards are a great way to revitalize urban environments and create an interactive city. The goal of my design is to achieve a somewhat similar effect with much lower costs and better integration into cities (in my opinion traditional LED screens are quite ugly and too commercialized).
I subdivided the surface of the shelter I created in module 3 into much more smaller panels. In reality, the colors on the individual panels can be realized by LEDs, which will allow different images, and even short clips, to be displayed.
The lighting effects would be most visible at night. They can be used to display useful information occasionally, such as the weather, alerts, and even the time at every hour.
Most of the times it would show something interesting. For example, it could be a cat sleeping when nothing is happening. The cat will wake up when a bus comes in and “play” with it. A QR code for donation can be placed in the bus station, so that when someone donates, say to the local animal shelter, the cat will interact with this person.
The overall Dynamo graph is as above. I reused parts of my graph from module to create the same surface, such that the new panels will align with the supporting ribs, girders, and columns.
Then I subdivided the surface into panels using the custom node “PanelQuad” that was introduced in module 4, which takes in the surface and the number of panels to be created in the u and v directions. Two sliders serve as inputs to u and v such that the user can easily adjust the number of panels. Another slider is used with the node “Element.SetParameterByName” such that the user can adjust the height of the panels.
Then, the user is able to select a desired image to be displayed on the panels by browsing for the image file. The “Image.Pixels” node then samples the image to get the color values using the same number of points as the number of panels. Then the “Override Element Color in View” node is used to map the colors onto the panels.
Finally, logic is written to allow users to flip the image either horizontally, vertically, or in both directions. The user simply inputs a number from 0 to 3 to achieve the desired results.