ecrlabs

DENDRO
Voxel plug-in for Grasshopper

Documentation
v0.01.00
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Overview
Installation......................................................................................................1

Basic Usage
Settings Component Inputs.........................................................................2

Converters
Mesh to Volume.............................................................................................3
Curve to Volume.............................................................................................3
Point Cloud to Volume...................................................................................4
Volume to Mesh.............................................................................................5
Invalid Mesh Solutions..................................................................................6

Filters
Smooth............................................................................................................7
Offset...............................................................................................................7
Blend................................................................................................................7
Mask Filter......................................................................................................8

Intersect Components
Union............................................................................................................ 10
Intersect....................................................................................................... 10
Difference.................................................................................................... 10

Input Output
Write VDB......................................................................................................11
Read VDB......................................................................................................11

Grasshopper Compatibility
Component Chart........................................................................................11

External Links
Contact and GitHub.....................................................................................12

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OVERVIEW

Dendro is a volumetric modeling plug-in for Grasshopper built on top of the OpenVDB library. It provides multiple
ways to wrap points, curves, and meshes as a volumetric data type, allowing you to then perform various
operations on those volumes. Dendro includes components for boolean, smoothing, offsets, and morphing
operations.

When working with meshes or Breps, these types of operations are often computationally heavy, prone to
failures, or cannot handle complex geometry. OpenVDB’s volume data structures allow for quicker computation
with higher repeatability, enabling you to leverage more complex operations within Grasshopper.

The goal was to make Dendro integrate into Grasshopper as seamlessly as possible. Whereas many voxel
solutions require you to think of geometry as living with a bounding box, Dendro makes working with volumes
no different than handling any other geometry in Grasshopper. Dendro works with many native Grasshopper
components, avoiding the ‘blocking’ found in other plugins, and allowing you to move in and out of volume
operations very quickly.

INSTALLATION

DOWNLOAD AND UNBLOCK

1
Download the plug-in from www.ecrlabs.com/dendro
Right click the ZIP file and select “Properties” from the
drop-down menu. Make sure “Unblock” is not check ed
under the General tab.

COPY PLUGIN FILES

2
Copy all files from the ZIP to your Rhino/Grasshopper
plug-in directory. This should be:
C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Roaming\Grasshopper\Libraries\

3 DISABLE COFF BYTE ARRAYS

Open Rhino. Type the command:
GrasshopperDeveloperSettings

Make sure “Memory load *.GHA assemblies

using COFF byte arrays” is unchecked.

Failure to unblock the zip file or disable COFF byte arrays will result in the plug-in not working.

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BASIC USAGE

The typical workflow for the Dendro plug-in is to generate a volume, run your operations on it and then output
your volume as a mesh. Volume objects can be created from Meshes, Curves or Points.

GLOBAL VARIABLES
All the geometry converters within Dendro use a global settings parameter. There are fringe use-cases where
you may want to use different settings for each converter, but in general, you should create one settings
component and feed it into all of your components.

SETTINGS COMPONENT INPUTS

Let’s start with the settings component to create your first volume. The settings component has four inputs:

Voxel Size (S) Bandwidth (B) Isovalue (I) Adaptivity (A)

Used by: Used by: Used by: Used by:

• Mesh to Volume • Mesh to Volume • Volume to Mesh • Volume to Mesh
• Curve to Volume • Curve to Volume
• Point Cloud to Volume • Point Cloud to Volume Description: Description:
Isovalue is the accuracy Adaptivity sets the
Description: Description: of the resulting mesh to uniformity of mesh faces.
Voxel size is the x, y, z Bandwidth extends the the original value. it can be Values can range from 0-1,
dimensions of the individual available voxel field around abstractly thought of as a with a value 0 being more
voxels filling the volume. your volume. Voxels within positive or negative offset. equalized and dense.
Think of this as the this band are set active,
resolution of the volume. everything else is inactive. Suggestions: Suggestions:
Typically you want to keep Higher adaptivities will
Suggestions: Suggestions: this at zero to maintain allow more variation in
Keep this value as large as This controls the active accuracy to the actual polygon size, resulting in
possible while working and voxel count so keep this volume. fewer polygons and quicker
decrease it as a final step. value as small as possible calculations.
If you encounter “Invalid
in order to minimize
Mesh” issues, then setting
computation time.
the Isovalue to 0.002 is
often a workaround.

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CONVERSION

With an understanding of the basics of volume settings, you can use the Dendro conversion components to
switch to and from volume data. For converting geometry into volumes, you can use the Mesh to Volume,
Curves to Volume and Point Cloud to Volume components. Use the Volume to Mesh for getting your volume
back into a closed mesh.

MESH TO VOLUME
The Mesh to Volume component takes any closed mesh as input and converts it into a volume. For the Mesh
to Volume component to work it must have a Settings input and a “closed” mesh.

You can generate valid volumes from “open” meshes if your voxel size is larger than any gaps in the mesh.
This feature can be useful for mesh repair or for creating a watertight mesh for 3D printing.

Mesh to Volume only works on closed meshes. If a mesh is open you will get erratic results. In the example to the right,
the input mesh box (left) is missing an entire face and as a result the output (right) is incorrect.

Open mesh Erratic output from

example Mesh to Volume

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 POINT CLOUD TO VOLUME

The Point Cloud to Volume component generates volumes from point data. Similar to Curve to Volume, this
component takes in a radius and creates a volume sphere at each point. You can supply one radius value for
everything or provide a list of radius values for each point.

This component can be used to replicate the features of the Curve to Volume but with more control. Below you
can see what happens as segment increases are applied to a curve with the resulting points used to create a
volume.

Additionally, the Point Cloud to Volume

component can take in a list of radius
values, one for each point provided. This
allows you to make complex variable
volumes from an input curve.
In this example points along a curve are
given a radius from 0.2 up to 3.0.

Points can also be used to create

a thickened volume from a mesh
or surface by supplying points.
Here all the vertices of a mesh
surface are extracted and
assigned a radius to create the
resulting volume.

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 CURVE TO VOLUME
The Curve to Volume component takes any curve as input and generates a simple volume from it. The curve is
wrapped with a spherical profile of a given radius. The radius input defines the size of these spheres based off
of your global Rhino units.

Curves can also be used to effectively create lattice structures from existing line data when used in conjunction
with other plug-ins such as Crystallon or Interlattice, potentially with better reliability and performance
characteristics than their built in mesh generators.

VOLUME TO MESH
Volume to mesh is the single output component to get volumetric data back into a format that is native to
Grasshopper. The Volume to Mesh component will take single or multiple Volume (V) inputs and convert them
into mesh output.

The settings driving the mesh generation are the Isovalue and Adaptivity that come out of the Settings
component (see the table on page 2 for more information).

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 In some instances, converting a volume into a mesh may result in an “Invalid Mesh.” Invalid Meshes often appear
to output correctly and render from the Grasshopper canvas without issue but fail on subsequent operations and
will not bake. As a result, they can be frustrating to spot and diagnose.

The easiest fix is to make a change to your Isovalue and take it from 0 to a small number such as 0.001 or 0.002
which will usually result in a valid mesh output. If there is still a failure to try tweaking your Adaptivity settings.

INVALID MESH
In this example the Volume to Mesh component is outputting an invalid mesh. This is not obvious until the
mouse is hovered over the “M” of the output triggering the yellow breakout info box.

VALID MESH
The invalid state was resolved by increasing the Isovalue from 0 to 0.002. This is the most common fix for
any invalid mesh output.

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FILTERS

Filters are a group of Dendro components that modify volume objects. Filters offer some amazing flexibility in
modifying volumetric input data. Using other volumes as masks, you can even isolate specfic areas to apply
filtering to.

SMOOTH VOLUME
The Smooth component runs a smoothing operation on an input volume. The Smooth component has the
following inputs:

Volume (V) Type (T) Width (W) Iterations (I)

Usage: Usage: Usage: Usage:

This is the input volume that There are four smoothing Width can be thought of as Iteration is the number
the smooth operation will types available: Gaussian (0), the scale of the smoothing of times the smoothing
run on. Input can be single or Laplacian (1), Mean (2) and effect on the input volume. operation runs on the input
multiple volumes. Median (3). Values supplied Input must be a positive body.
and integers. integer.

Width input has no effect on

Laplacian Type smoothing.

OFFSET VOLUME
The Offset component offsets the exterior boundary of a volume. The Distance (D) input specifies the
offset amount in your document world units. Offset units may also be positive or negative which is very
helpful in shelling an object as well as making molds for casting.

BLEND VOLUME
The Blend component takes any two volume inputs and morphs between them. The position to evaluate the
blend at is controlled by the parameter (t) input (interval of 0-1). The End Time (E) number establishes the
upper boundary of the time step and is tied to voxel size.

To find the correct End time, attach your volume inputs and then set your parameter (t) to 1. Then increase
your End Time until the output looks exactly like the (B) volume input. Now you can adjust the parameter (t) to
blend between the two input volumes.

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 MASK FILTER
Dendro’s filter components (Smooth, Offset and Morph) all have a “Mask (M)” input, which allows you to
perform the filter operation in specific areas. Mask data is created by the Create Mask component. The mask is
defined by a volume which represents the bounds of the mask.

Masks function similarly to the mask feature found in a 2D image editor, allowing the user to define or limit an
area that will be affected by a filter.

Masks may seem confusing at first but getting comfortable with them allows for critical control of filter effects
in the Dendro volume workflow.

Mask Volume

Effected Volume Masked smooth

area operation

Mask Sphere Resulting volume

Volume (V) Min Value (A) Max Value (B) Mask Invert (I)

Usage: Usage: Usage: Usage:

This is the input volume that Min Value should be a MaxValue should be a positive True or False boolean input
will be your mask area. negative number. This value number. This number can be that defines which side of the
can not be zero. zero. mask volume a filter effect will
Example: influence.

In the above example the green Example: Example:

sphere is the mask volume. The Min Value defines how The max value defines how the Example:
This volume solely exists to the mask effect will transition masked effect will transition A False boolean will mean
define a filter area and is not inside of the masked volume outside of the volume a filter will only apply to the
seen in the resulting filter boundary. boundary. target volume on the inside
operation. Start with a low negative It is easiest to maintain this at of the mask. A True input will

A mask must overlap a target number such as -0.001 and 0 unless you are looking for a apply the filter to any part

volume in order to be of use. work your way up to see specific effect. of the volume outside of the

effect. mask.

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BOOLEAN

Boolean operations are one of the more compelling features within Dendro. Where mesh (and even NURBS)
booleans can be prone to failure, volume booleans are incredibly stable and can be computationally lighter. The
standard boolean operations available are Union, Difference, and Intersection.

When used with Filters the booleans can be extremely useful at shelling objects and/or making molds.

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 UNION
Union combines any overlapping input volumes into a single body. The component must have multiple input
volumes on the same branch of a tree in order to run correctly.

INTERSECT
Intersection outputs any overlapping volumetric area from both the A and B inputs. Inputs can be single
volumes or lists.

DIFFERENCE
This is the basic subtraction boolean in Dendro. The B input is subtracted from the A input. Inputs can be
single volumes or lists.

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IO

Dendro has basic read and write capabilities for OpenVDB binary files. This can be utilized to interact with
OpenVDB files generated in programs outside of Rhino/Grasshopper such as Houdini or Maya.

WRITE VDB FILE

Saves a .VDB file to the specified File Path (F). File path must be fully specified valid location, file name and end
in “.vdb”. Boolean set to “True” triggers file output.

READ VDB FILE

Loads a .VDB file from specified location. File must have .vdb extension.

COMPONENT COMPATIBILITY

Dendro works with most Grasshopper components giving it the ability to fully integrate into the standard
Grasshopper workflow and logic. This helps to make the learning curve for Dendro voxel usage extremely low.

That being said, voxel systems are not natively supported by either Rhino or Grasshopper so some components
can have unexpected and unpredictable results. Below is a compatibility chart for native Grasshopper
components that accept Geometry (G) or Content (C) inputs with Dendro Volume (V) outputs.

Functioning Native Components

Sets Transform • Euclidean / Mirror • Util / Compound

All List items working • Affine / Scale • Euclidean / Move • Util / Split
All Set items working • Array / Box Array • Euclidean / Move to Plane • Util / Inverse Trans
All Tree items working • Array / Curve Array • Euclidean / Orient • Util / Transform
• Array / Linear Array • Euclidean / Rotate • Util / Group
Surface • Array / Polar Array • Euclidean / Rotate 3D • Util / UnGroup
• Primitive / BBox • Array / Rectangular Array • Euclidean / Rotate Axis
• Euclidean / Rotation Dir

Non-Functioning Native Components

Transform • Affine / Orient Direction Transform Vector

• Affine / Camera Obscura • Affine / Project • Euclidean / Move Away • Point / Project point
• Affine / Scale NU • Affine / Project From (partially working)
• Affine / Shear • Affine / Rect Mapping • Morph / (none of the
• Affine / Shear Angle • Affine / Tri Mapping components in this group
• Affine / Box Mapping • Array / Kaleidoscope are compatible)

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SPECIAL THANKS

The MachineHistories team for all their help in bringing this altogether and for their insights into making this a
much more thoughtful plug-in.

McNeel for their amazing documentation which helped in integrating these tools more seamlessly into the
Grasshopper workflow.

ADDITIONAL INFO

OPENVDB
Dendro is based built on top of the OpenVDB library which is developed and maintained by DreamWorks
Animation for use in special effects applications for feature film productions. For more information please visit:
www.openvdb.org

GITHUB REPOSITORY
Dendro is an open source project. The repository is up and available at GitHub:
www.github.com/ecrlabs/dendro

FOOD4RHINO
Questions on using the plug-in? We frequently check our Food4Rhino forum page and will get back to you asap:
https://www.food4rhino.com/app/dendro

CONTACT
Want to talk to us directly? No problem:
[email protected]

The Dendro plug-in is a beta product being actively updated so please check to ensure you have the most
up-to-date version at: www.ecrlabs.com/dendro

Thanks for the support!

-The ECR Labs Team

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