TweenCurves!

Thanks to a very helpful email from the Fabrication Lab manager, I now know how to create the in between lines on the THERE IS NO BEFORE AND AFTER mobile! The command is call TweenCurves and can be done in Rhino and in Grasshopper. I tried it out in both.

At first, I ran into a lot of problems.

Here it is in Grasshopper:

And here it is in Rhino:

I just couldn’t get it to work, so I split my start and end shapes into simple lines instead of the spaghetti noodle shape, and then the TweenCurve function worked beautifully. It was annoying because I had to recreate the offset and looped ends for each iteration of the TweenCurve, but it was worth it to get the exact effect I wanted with the limited information I had.

Here you can see the full effect, along with my xray images that I used as a template for my start and end shapes.

I chose to do 11 iterations of the “tween curves” because the first xray is from when I was 14, right before my first surgery, and the second xray is from when I was 26, right after my second surgery. The 11 in between curves represent the 11 years between my surgeries. I plan to print doubles of those 11 in between curves so that the shapes can morph into and out of one another in a continuous loop, thus emphasizing a lack of a distinct before and after.

Since doing this, I spoke with the Fabrication Lab manager in person and learned how to make the TweenCurve command work in Rhino and Grasshopper without having to slip my shape into a simple line and recreate work for myself. The key is ensuring that all my lines are moving in the same direction.