VaryLab Cloud Models

The model manager

A new feature has arrived: VaryLab Cloud Models. 

Select the models section from the menu bar of the members area. This brings you to the models manager. Here you can upload and manage your own models and view shared models by other users.

Your own models can be shared with other users. Enter the email address of your partner in the add share section to create a new shared model with this person.

Your models can be used in VaryLab quite naturally. Just select a model from the corresponding project to load it at startup.

Model upload dialog

Per project model selection

Design Research Exchange 2013 - Vertical Net Structures

The VaryLab team is involved in this years Design Research Exchange.

Find more information at http://www.henn.com/de/drx2013 or at https://www.facebook.com/DesignResearchExchange

Discrete Surface Parameterization

When speaking about parameterization of a discrete surface we really mean the assignment of texture coordinates to the vertices of a mesh in VaryLab. This enables us to draw images on the surface and do processing in this image space. We can do re-meshing by introducing new vertices at some locations on the mesh guided by some pattern in texture space, e.g., a quad or triangle pattern. See this post for a description of the re-meshing capabilities of VaryLab. 

Default Settings

VaryLab supports a parameterization scheme called discrete conformal parameterization for triangle meshes. We implement an algorithm recently published here. 

To parameterize a mesh conformally in VaryLab you  press the "Unwrap" button in the Discrete Conformal Parameterization panel. There are a number of settings that define how the parameterization algorithm treats your mesh. The default settings should work well for triangle meshes that have one boundary component as in these pictures. These settings create a geometry in texture space where the edge lengths of the boundary edges are the same as in the mesh's geometry.

Textures In VaryLab

VaryLab supports the display of textures on meshes that are parameterized. You can select a texture from the "Content Appearance" panel. The default textures included in VaryLab are the re-meshing preview patterns quads, triangles, and hexagons. You can adjust the scale, position, orientation, and shear of the texture. These texture settings work also as preview for the re-meshing processor of VaryLab.

Manual Boundary Conditions 

For meshes with one boundary component we can define more complex boundary conditions. For instance we could select four boundary vertices as the corners of a rectangle in texture space. For this you have to select the four boundary vertices and edit their properties in the "Custom Vertices" panel. Check the "Custom Theta" check box and set their value to 90 degree. The global boundary options in the Boundary panel should be set to Conformal and Straight. Hit the Unwrap button to create the parameterization.

VaryLab Data Visualization

Data visualization is one of most important tasks when doing surface optimization. On the basis of the analysis of data on the surface we decide what parameters go into the optimization and how the optimization core is performing. In this post we introduce the basic visualization features of VaryLab to you.

Visualization Panel

In VaryLab data visualization comes as a build in tool-kit, the halfedge data visualization panel. The basic idea is that data sources provide data for the nodes of a surface. So there are data providers for vertices, or edges, or faces, or all at once. These data providers deliver their data to visualizers that in turn have sockets that take data for vertices, edges, or faces and create their visualization. Select a data source from the middle of the panel. In the right box the compatible visualizers are presented long with buttons for the suitable node type. Click the node type button to activate the corresponding visualizer for this type of nodes.
E.g., to show a face area visualization select the FaceArea data source and the blue face button next to the node colors visualizer. The active node colors visualizer is listed in the top-left box along with its options.

There are a number of basic data visualizers contained in the module set of VaryLab web service.

Node Colors

Face planarity visualization by node colors

Colored nodes are a very effective way to represent scalar data on nodes. The nodes are colored using a color map. We mostly use the hue and red green color maps. This visualizer should be used in conjunction with the histogram to connect the colors with the function values.

Colored Beads

Face planarity visualized by colored beads

Similar to the node colors this visualizer represents scalar functions on surface nodes. In addition to the color the size of the spheres indicate the value of the function. There are options to adjust the overall scale and the span of the sphere radii. As for the node colors the color map can be chosen.

Histogram

A face planarity histogram

The histogram shows a discrete density plot of scalar data on surface nodes. It is integrated in the visualization panel in a tab behind the configuration. The color map can be adjusted to match the colors of a colored nodes or colored beads visualizer. The number of bins that are used to create the density plot can be selected from the visualizer options.

Vector Data

Vector field visualization

Vector data on surface nodes can be displayed with this visualizer. In VaryLab this is mainly used for the visualization of principle curvature directions and their singularities.

Remeshing with VaryLab

Input Surface

The term remeshing referes to the change of mesh connectivity while retaining the overall shape of the surface. This post should give you an impression of the remeshing features of VaryLab.

We start with a geometry that is based on a square and exhibits a "smooth" triangulated surface. This geometry is the result of a form-finding process calculating node positions for certain load-bearing conditions. This geometry acts shell-like under some assumptions and we want to change its mesh to a quad based mesh and to a regular triangulation.

Quads Preview Texture

You can download this model from here if you follow this tutorial step by step. The model comes readily equipped with texture coordinates so we can apply a texture image to it. How to calculate texture coordinates is another story that can also be achieved with VaryLab. This is the topic of another post.



VaryLab comes with its standard remeshing preview textures. They can be selected from the content appearance panel and are applied to all models. We use triangles, quads, and hexagons as remesh patterns. You can adjust size and rotation of the preview texture. In this example we want the new triangles, or quads to align with the boundary of the surface so we do not rotate.

Remeshing Panel

The next step is the actual remeshing process. In the remeshig panel select the pattern you want to apply and hit the remesh button. For this example we choose either triangles quantized or quads quantized. This means that no chopped elements will end up at the boundary.

Quantized Triangles Mesh

The result of the remeshing operation is a flat mesh with the right connectivity. Press lift/flat to bring the vertices onto the target geometry. If you press this button again you are back to a flat mesh. In this flat mode one can do intermediate editing steps that we do not need for this simple example.

Quantized Quads Mesh

It is also possible to remesh with hexagons using the triangle pattern and an extra editing step. In some cases your model contains cuts and the remesh pattern has so called singularities. VaryLab has methods to cope with these situations and we will cover these advanced methods in a different post.





We hope this post helps understanding the features of VaryLab a bit better. See you for the next tutorial post.