Chrysalis Grasshopper + Processing

What is Chrysalis?
The purpose of the Chrysalis project is to make it easier for people to create 3D interactive applications for the web, by combining two already existing platforms: Processing and Grasshopper.

At the core of the project is an open source app, written in Processing, that translates designs made using the intuitive 3D design interface called Grasshopper into working Processing code. Also included are the necessary resources needed by Processing to support some of Grasshopper’s special types of 3D geometry, as well as a feature that runs within Gasshopper to initiate the translation into processing.

How will Chrysalis help designers?

There is a new paradigm emerging in which small scale designers are offering customizeable versions of their designs through interactive web applets. Customers can go to the website, select a number of settings, preview the customized product and get a price estimate. Then when they are ready, they press a button and the product is made and shipped to them directly.

Processing makes apps like this possible through its robust graphics handling, and the ability to run in a web browser and interact with other websites via html. However, Processing has a text-based code editor, which is difficult to use in 3D design, especially for visually oriented people.

The intuitive WYSIWYG interface offered by Grasshopper is much more effective for visually oriented designers because it shows data and its relationships graphically instead of as lines of text. Unfortunately, Grasshopper models are not as share-able as Processing. It is not possible to view or interact with grasshopper designs on the web. The answer is Chrysalis; Think of it as designing 3D interactive content for the web using an intuitive visual

What will the funding be used for?

Funding will pay for professional software developers to produce the following items, which will be open-source and available through the Processing and Grasshopper online communities, under the Creative Commons license:

-New 3D libraries for Processing to support selected types of NURBS geometry
-Adaptation of some existing 3D geometry libraries for Processing
-New Chrysalis translator app, written in Processing
-New initiator component to run within Grasshopper
-Complete documentation of all included libraries and translator app

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