2d cubic coordinate system

i want to achieve that my particles travel on the surface of a rectangular cube.

i generate an x & y coordinate for each particle in a loop system. now I want to wrpa this plane around a cube, like you would do with a sheet of paper.

i know i could build this into my loop system, but that is rather complex already, and i want to have a general solution for other patches.

using map nodes, switches etc. seems not very elegant to me, and as xyz are interdependent, its also very tricky.

any ideas on this?

thx, eno.


i am doing these nrt drawing things, and now i want to make a piece for a room that covers 4 faces of a cube. seamless edges of course.

hi eno,

so you want something like:

2dspread in ; 3dspread (cloud of points) in; 3dspread out ?

did i get this right?

hi kalle, i’m not sure if i got YOU right,
but yes, i want to generate a 3d spread (a 3d vector) out of a 2d vector.

this is the problem:

cube problem.jpg (117.6 kB)

why not spread out the points in 3dspace and use map in clamp mode to constrain all coordinates into -1/+1 ? (perhaps making sure that the initial points all have a minimum distance of 1)

somewhere i have the patch of a rectangular attractor… will it help?

@ oschatz
i want the particles to travel on the surface of the cube. the cameras would be in the center, and a particle would continue its path on the next wall when it leaves the area of the first wall.

imagine a pool ball following its vector over the surface of a cube. like wrapping a thread around a box.

@ tonfilm
dont know really. the tracks of the particles are okay.

but maybe my approach is all wrong and i need to think in 3d space tight from the beginning.


ah. didnt see your image at first.
maybe the patch is of use, yes. can you email or skype it to me?

probably it will work if you just use a Cartesian node to distribute the 2D positions with a certain radius around the origin in 3D space…

i tried that, but that makes a spherical surface of course, which leads to a perspective deformations of the particles towards the center of each surface of the cube.

and secondly its not working because the density of the particles becomes higher at the poles and you would see that you are actually looking at a sphere.

see images.

test.jpg (89.3 kB)

just an idea:
Doesn’t @diki 3dLines DrawTool contain something useful for you?