#formz

Next week I'm launching a new video course on the Method website. I've been working on it for the last 3 months and am happy it's almost here!

Leading up to the launch, I'll be previewing a small video section of the course each day. Each video will be about 5 minutes long, so I have socially engineered them to be the perfect distraction.

I won't post the updates here on this site each day, so be sure to check it out and then go back each day to see a new section of the course as they are revealed. Of course you can follow along on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook as well if that's your thing.

A crowded museum.

A dryscaped home surrounded by artfully arranged boulders, small stones, and grasses.

A wooded hill, with trees thinning at the edge of new development.

Most architectural presentations require more that a photographic backdrop to bring it to life. Entourage elements are not ust decoration, but serve to complete the site's character, or to demonstrate how people will use the space. In the case of the museum, it will feel sterile and unapproachable if not sufficiently populated with small groups of visitors. The design intent of the house is mischaracterized if its edges are not 'eased' by the landscaping. And the development's relationship to the existing natural context must be made clear to all stakeholders.

In the past, placing convincingly random entourage could be a bit of a chore. To instance a thousand randomly-oriented, unique stones might mean many thousands of clicks for placement, scaling, and rotation. And bear in mind that you won't want those stones to self-intersect, so you'll have to be careful. With the LAB's new Paint Objects tool, placing those thousand stones is as simple as a click-drag of the mouse.

Paint Objects uses a spray-paint metaphor to dynamically place objects onto other objects. Select your source geometry, which may be any number of objects, groups, or components. Then, click on the object you'd like to spray the geometry onto, and drag to paint. Release that mouse button when done with your stroke. That's the simplest operation, but there are many options to make this a flexible and powerful tool:

• Any number of source objects/groups/Components may be selected. They will be placed randomly, but in equal proportions. • Go light or heavy with placement density. • Brush diameter specified in real-world units. • Use the Linear and Cubic brush falloff options to paint clusters of objects with convincingly natural areas of higher concentration. • Automatically eliminate intersections between placements with three grades of collision detection. • Random rotation control. • Random scaling proportional to the original source object, or specified by real-world dimensions. • Orient normal to the surface normal you are painting on, or to one of the planes (e.g. XY plane for trees growing strait up) • Use the brush to paint on any and all objects in your scene- not just a preselected 'terrain' object. (There is the option to paint on just the first clicked object, however.) • Groups and Components are fully supported. Group hierarchies are preserved when copied and placed, and Components remain components to keep your resource footprint at a minimum.

Of course, Paint Objects is not limited to architectural uses. It can be used for any creative purpose requiring natural-looking distribution: Leaves on a reflecting pool, a mountain of chocolates, or an armada of spacecraft. We look forward to seeing what you'll do with it. Please post feedback on the LAB forum, here.

The Paint Objects plugin is available for free, as part of the LAB Transform Collection. Full instructions and download link here.

A well organized project is a joy to work with–– and the opposite can be said for a disorganized one. Continuing our quest to promote good project organization from the get-go–– and minimize end-of-project cleanup–– we're introducing two new commands to make layers management a bit easier.

When you want to switch to another layer, there are usually objects visible in your project that are already on the layer. What if you could just select one of those objects and go directly to its layer? That's just what the Active Layer from Selection command does. Key-shortcut this one, and you'll spend a lot less time scrolling through dozens layers to find the right one.

Focus on Layer works just like Active Layer from Selection, but it presents a dialog with options to ghost, hide, or lock other layers. Good for those cases where your work requires your to isolate a single layer.