MetaBalls in 3D

Playing with the 2D Metaball component in Grasshopper. I was curious about why there are no Metaballs in 3D in Grasshopper. Then, I realized that in fact, the 2D Metaball component is creating a section of a 3D Metaball computation. I think it is a topic worth studying even 10 years after this original post to develop an easy way to create the metaball surfaces. In 2012, thanks to the Grasshopper’s easy interface, I was able to create a series of planes from the “Shortest Path” study quickly.

Grasshopper is an easy and very promising tool for form-finding. I’ve been collecting such experiences for almost 4 years. It is very helpful to construct your own design knowledge. Still, I have no idea if these experiences would lead to proper practice and pedagogy of architecture.

Here is the Metaballs in 3D Grasshopper definition. I created that file in 2012 and it still worked when I checked in 2021. Grasshopper marks some of the components as “Old”. However, they still work as expected.

I am sure that the most obvious question here would be the creation of surfaces, not only the curves. I think there are some tools and add-ons that would do this job. However, I am afraid I don’t have time to install and try them. But I would be glad to create a solution natively inside Grasshopper to do that. A nice Python script can be helpful here. Maybe I will study it in the future.

To conclude, here are some quotes from Greg Lynn, father of the term “Blob Architecture”;

We don’t want to make things look familiar but we do want to look real… to have a cosmic scale but still have gravitational logic.

Greg Lynn, “New City” (Video Lecture) in Seed Design Series, Seed Magazine.

In the end it’s geometry… Visualizing geometry and thinking abstractly was something that came easily. When I went to college I got out of architecture for a while, and majored in philosophy. Then I realized that all the philosophy I was reading was really about form.

Greg Lyenn, Eva Priz (Interviewer). “Interview.” in Index Magazine. 2005