Walk in the Park
I decided to do this assignment in Grasshopper, as one of my goals this quarter is to become more comfortable with Grasshopper workflows. The steps that I took to complete this assignment are a little different from those outlined in the instructions (for Dynamo). To start, I defined all of my inputs using sliders, including base height, number of waves, amplitude, and radius (the maximum distance I am defining). Since Rhino defaults to millimeters, I made sure to use a unit conversion component to convert the inputs from feet to millimeters. The grid stays as a 200’x200’ grid, but the user can choose how finely to mesh the grid based on sliders defining the cube dimensions. From there, I used the equation outlined in the instructions to create the sine curve that defines the height of my cubes. I found that I did not need to multiply all of my terms by 360 as specified in the instructions. Additionally, I found that I did not need to fix my base height by dividing the height by 2. Instead, I made a max component that takes the maximum of the calculated height and 0, so that negative heights are not possible. Therefore, the lowest possible point on my grid is the z=0 axis. I played around with deciding whether to have this max component before adding the base height or after. I found that adding it after adding base height creates much more fluid-looking wave patterns. The latter created very sharp peaks, which didn’t look that great. I also went a step further and tried to implement a gradient to capture areas where the most exposure to the sun would occur for sunbathing (yellow highlighted areas).