Similar to the Kumiko pattern, the Shoji screens also resemble interesting patterns. With this tool I wanted to recreate a procedural Shoji wall panel which can be changed in it’s dimensions and patterns.
Base frames and Senbonkoushi pattern
The outer frame is created from a simple box. From there a variant is created which keeps some space to fill in a bottom pattern and another variant to create the Senbonkoushi pattern. It’s very similar but with difference in the vertical spacing, which requires different calculations.
The Senbonkoushi pattern has a little space at the bottom and top. Changing the parameters for this pattern takes the full size of the outerframe in account, while the BaseLineFrame has to keep the space at the bottom resizable and closed directly at the end.
Hishigumi pattern
The base of this pattern is coded in a wrangle node. It also could be done with other nodes like linenodes, but I enjoy to try solving problems with code as it gives me a deeper understanding.
The challenge here was to make this pattern scaleable in a uniform way.
A second wrangle node connects the points, then the result is mirrored, fused and a sweep node creates the geometry from it.
Kagome pattern
This pattern starts of with the hishigumi pattern from before and just add vertical lines inbetween to create the star-like appearance.
The conversion to geometry is also the same as before, but I added a boolean to cut of the geometry around the borders, so that those little triangles remain. It’s wrapped in a for-loop to avoid that all elements are fused together in a big messy mesh.
Kouzu pattern
Quite a complex pattern, as it has a lot elements in it, which allow for a lot variation as well.
As before I don’t want do create this pattern just from merging different sized boxes together, as this would lead to Z-fighting where they overlap, but rather want to have a fully enclosed single mesh. As this pattern is symmetrical, I only created a quarter of it and mirrored it two times.
Bottom section patterns
The shapes shown here are the ones which fill up the bottom section of a wall element.
Empty
Just the empty base shape. Very simple extrusion setup.
Shokko
As before, not merging boxes but rather creating a single piece of geometry which goes into the empty shape.
Kakuasanoha
And another single piece mesh pattern, based on two triangles.
Section creation
The point structure to copy the patterns to is entirely written in Vex and Python. The python part handles the switch behavior for the targetgroups on the copytopoints nodes.
Endresult
Everything merged together with a switch for the pattern selection. The controls node is a nullnode with all parameters to control the patterns. If the tool is converted to an HDA it also makes it pretty simple to copy and link the parameters.
